LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



TURNING POINTS 
In the World's History. 




HENRY MANN 

'I 

AUTHOR OF 

44 The Land We Live In 



PUBLISHED BY 
THE CHRISTIAN HERALD, 

Louis Klopsch, Proprietor, 
BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK. 




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THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 



Copyright 1897 
By LOUIS KLOPSCH. 




INTRODUCTORY. 



The path of human progress has witnessed many- 
turning-points from the time when superior in- 
tellect taught man that he was different from the 
brute. In religion, in literature, in science the 
forward march has been one of difficulty, of pain, 
of sacrifice. Religion is not alone in the precious 
heritage of martyrs who have endured and per- 
ished for the truth. Every line of invention, of 
learning, of thought beyond the present, and of 
aspiration for the improvement of mankind, has 
had its martyrs, and in the end its victors. The 
turning-points in history are a record of human 
suffering, of human effort, and of human triumph 
and achievement, under the control of that prov- 
idence which guides the affairs of men. 



I have sought to indicate in these pages some 
of the leading occurrences that have influenced 
the destinies of humanity, confining myself 
chiefly to events connected with and subsequent 
to the dawn of enlightenment in the fifteenth cen- 
tury. I have sought to trace the causes and 
course of the Reformation, of the French Revo- 
lution, and of the other great turning-points in 
(3) 



4 Introductory \ 

the beginnings of great inventions, and their 
influence upon modern conditions have not been 
neglected. 



As war is the ultimate court of appeal in human 
affairs, it follows that the battlefield has often 
been a turning-point in history. Engagements 
by land and sea have decided the fate of nations, 
loosed the bonds of tyranny or riveted the chain 
of despotism. A single battle has sometimes 
halted manifest destiny, as Joshua halted the sun 
in its inevitable course, for centuries. The battle 
of Bannockburn was an instance of this. That 
England and Scotland should some day become 
united was as certain in the days of Edward the 
Second as any event not accomplished. The 
resolute valor of Bruce and the courage of his fol- 
lowers postponed that union for three centuries, 
and then it was brought about as a peaceful con- 
sequence of the accident of royal succession. 

It does not follow that what* is known as a 
decisive battle has been the turning-point of the 
historic episode of which that battle was the con- 
clusion, but it is only natural that the human 
mind should commonly associate great changes 
with prominent events. But for Moscow Napo- 
leon would, in all human probability, have never 
had to confront the British at Waterloo. Never- 
theless Waterloo decided his fate, and relieved 
Europe from the scourge of his ambition. In 
this sense, and for this reason, Waterloo will 



hitroductory . 5 

always be regarded as the greatest military event 
of the century, in the Old World at least. 

The defeat and destruction of the "Invincible 
Armada' ' merits a place in these pages because it 
secured to England superiority to Spain on the 
seas, and prevented a Roman Catholic conquest 
of the leading Protestant kingdom. The story of 
Pultowa can be read intelligently only in the 
light of Lutzen. Pultowa brought the Swedish 
empire to an end, and established the power of 
Russia on an enduring foundation. 

Since Waterloo the world has witnessed in 
Europe two decisive battles — Koniggratz and 
Sedan, the first of which established, and the 
second confirmed, the unity of Germany. 

Turning to our own land the struggle for the 
possession of Fort Duquesne, ending in the re- 
treat of the French, decided that the British race 
should dominate North America. Burgoyne's sur- 
render at Saratoga was the turning-point against 
England in the War of Independence. The battle 
of Lake Erie secured the Northwest to the United 
States, and put an end to the dream of an Indian 
power nursed by Great Britain, a mosquito mon- 
archy on the shores of Lake Superior. There yet 
remained to be decided whether Anglo-Americans 
or Spanish-Americans should be the Romans of 
the western hemisphere. The Mexican war, with 
its decisive battle of Cerro Gordo, settled that 
question so thoroughly that it has never since 
been raised, and is never likely to be raised 
again. 



6 Introductory. 

Then came our great civil war, with Gettysburg 
as its decisive battle. The American people, both 
North and South, have reason to be proud of the 
valor displayed on that fateful day. May the 
future turning-points of our nation be only in the 
direction of peace — save when peace would in- 
volve dishonor. 

HENRY MANN. 

August, 1897. 




CONTENTS. 



I.— The Birth of the Saviour, . . . 

II.— Canossa and the Rialto, .... 
The Triple Crown — An Imperial Sup- 
pliant—The Rialto — The Pope's 
Heel on Caesar's Neck — Papal Ab- 
solutism. 

III.— The First Bible Printed, . . , 

IV. — Gunpowder Versus Chivalry, 

V.— Vasco DaGama's Voyage, . . . 

VI. — First Voyage of Columbus, . 

VII. — Spain's Expulsion of the Jews, 

VIII.— The Reformation, 

Erasmus — Luther — Charles V. — The 
Reformation in Germany — The 
Reformation in England — The 
Reformation in Scotland — The 
Reformation in Holland — The 
Reformation in Sweden — The Ref- 
ormation in France. 

IX. — Trial of the Seven Bishops, . . . 

X.— Hutchinson's Writs of Assistance, 

XI. — The Guillotine Versus the Di- 
vine Right of Kings, .... 
Why Napoleon Failed. 

XII.— The Monroe Declaration, . . . . 

(7) 



PAGE. 

• 9 

. 16 



28 
33 
37 
43 
59 
66 



93 



127 



8 Contents. 

PAGE. 

XIII.— England's Commercial Turning- 
point, 134 

Peel Launches Free Trade. 

XIV.— Lincoln's Death-Blow to Slav- 
ery, 140 

XV.— The Geneva Tribunal, 148 

Arbitration's First Victory. 

XVI. — Industrial Turning-Points, . . . 162 
Watt Makes Steam Work— Murdock 
Gives Light — Fulton Ploughs the 
Hudson— Stephenson's "Rocket" 
Flies — Franklin Draws the Light- 
ning — Morse's Happy Thought — 
Cyrus Field's First Cable Message 
— Bell and Edison Make Light- 
ning Talk — Electric Light and 
Power — Cotton Spinning Machin- 
ery — Arkwright in England — 
Slater in America. 

XVII.— Ten Military and Naval Turn- 
ing-Points, 193 

Europe. — Destruction of the Span- 
ish Armada — Pultowa — Waterloo— 
Koniggratz — Sedan. America. — 
Duquesne — Saratoga — Lake Erie 
— Cerro Gordo — Gettysburg. 

XVIII. —Great Religious Movements of 

the Century, 281 



TURNING POINTS 

IN THE 

WORLD'S HISTORY. 



I.— THE BIRTH OF THE SAVIOUR. 

The birth of Christ was the greatest turn- 
ing-point of history. It was the first chap- 
ter in the gospel of a new dispensation — 
the gospel of common rights, common 
duties, a common manhood and common 
fraternity. The Christianity of the earlier 
days was typified in the stable at Beth- 
lehem. According to the belief of Chris- 
tians, the Saviour of mankind might have 
been born in a palace on the Tiber, or 
in the proudest residence of Herod the 
Great, but He elected to come as one of 
the vast, unnumbered multitude of un- 
known toilers who, for ages before and 
since His coming, have been trodden under 
foot of the rich, the noble and the powerful. 
In this He asserted at once the supremacy 
of God and the dignity and the equality of 
man. The birth of Christ was the first and 
eloquent declaration of our human brother- 
hood. It was a protest from Divinity itself 

(9) 



io Turning Points hi the 

against the artificial barriers of caste and 
class, erected, like the Tower of Babel, to 
overcome the decrees of heaven. 

It has been said, as an objection to 
Christianity, that Christ is not mentioned 
outside of sacred history. No higher trib- 
ute could be paid to the Saviour and Mes- 
siah. He did not belong — He did not choose 
to belong — to the class of whom history, or 
at least ancient history, recorded the deeds 
and achievements. He did not wade 
through a Rubicon of blood to a dictator- 
ship, or sweep with embattled armies over 
desolated provinces, amid the anguish of 
women and children and the ruins of un- 
counted homes. Ah no! Christ did not 
make history of that kind. His part was 
cast with the myriads who from the begin- 
ning of the world had been the victims of 
the history-makers, whose sufferings and 
sacrifices are known only to the Omniscient, 
and whose names have passed into oblivion 
with their unmonumented graves. Christ 
came as one of these. He was of them and 
with them. From among them He chose 
His disciples, and among them He gained 
His followers, and through their faithful 
ranks He made His triumphal way on that 
final ride to Jerusalem, the Passion and the 
Cross. The name and the career of Christ 
would have been out of place in the chron- 
icles of the Caesars and the pages which 



World' s History . n 

tell the story of Roman conquest and op- 
pression. 

******* 

CHRIST'S MISSION TO THK LOWLY. 

It was undoubtedly this mighty lesson of 
man's equality as taught by Christ in the 
very moment of His birth that excited the 
intense and fierce opposition of the powerful 
and privileged classes in Judea, and sub- 
sequently in Rome, against the Christians. 
The antagonism to early Christianity was 
based, not on religious differences, but on 
social and political grounds. Every in- 
stinct of wealth, power and authority be- 
came arrayed against a creed which taught 
that the poor man was as good as the rich 
man, the serf the equal of the emperor; that 
it was the duty of those who had, to share 
with those who had not. First to the 
Pharisee, as afterward to the Roman Caesar 
and his parasites, Christian doctrine ap- 
peared subversive of the very foundations 
of society. The Christians were perse- 
cuted, not because they did not believe in 
the gods of Olympus, but because they held 
Caesar to be no better, as a man, than any- 
body else, and because they held it to be 
the duty of Dives to divide with Lazarus, 
and for all to labor for the common welfare. 
The idea of worshiping as God one who 
had been born in a stable and laid in a 



12 Turning Points in the 

manger, who had worked as a carpenter 
and then turned preacher, and who had 
told the rich and fortunate to sell their 
goods and give to the poor, impressed the 
L,uculluses, the nobles, the kings, emperors 
and priests of that age, as a menace to the 
very foundations of the state, and a defi- 
ance of the classes who made ordinary man- 
kind the slaves of their appetites and the 
ministers of their caprice. 

At the same time the very doctrine of 
human equality and the brotherhood of 
man, which raised all the dominant forces 
of ancient society against the stable-born 
Christ, made Christian ity invincible. The 
millions had been waiting and hungering 
for just such a Deliverer. The Jews never 
expected their Messiah to come in that 
guise, but the common people, both Jew 
and Gentile, were quick to understand the 
Saviour because He understood them, and 
the same touch of heart to heart which 
drew multitudes to Jesus in His lifetime 
drew multitudes to His apostles when they 
went among the nations with their mission 
from the manger and the cross. Christi- 
anity was the people's faith. It did not 
spread down to the people from the classes 
above them, but gradually won recruits 
from the higher ranks by the example of 
self-denial, charity and purity, illustrated 
in the Christian communit} T . 



World's History. 13 

Persecution, intolerance and every form 
of temptation, could not quench the star 
that rose over the sleeping Babe in that 
lonely stable in Bethlehem. The sword of 
Herod sought in vain to destroy the new- 
born Christ, although hundreds of inno- 
cents perished that the fears of the tyrant 
might be allayed. What a cruel sacrifice ! 
What awful evidence of the depth of deg- 
radation and oppression to which even 
the chosen people had sunk under the ruth- 
less despotism of the wretches who wore 
the crown of David and of Solomon ! What 
a picture of the condition of the class among 
whom Christ chose to be born, and to whom 
His birth was the morning light of deliv- 
erance ! Helpless in the grasp of their op- 
pressors, their children put to the sword 
to gratify the whim of a monster, and 
burdened almost beyond endurance by the 
exactions of usurer and tax-gatherer, the 
common people of that age had no rights 
that were regarded as paramount to the 
absolute will of the despots who scourged 
them. Judaism had become loaded down 
with forms and ceremonies, and its religion 
was a gilded skeleton of the once vigorous 
faith which had animated the Israelites in 
heroic struggle against their hereditary foes. 
The Romans held them in bondage and 
looked upon them with contempt, while 
permitting the degenerate rulers who 



14 Turning Points in the 

exercised the worst form of Eastern tyranny 
over their miserable subjects to retain the 
thrones which they stained by the most in- 
human excesses. Judea had lost its inde- 
pendence without gaining as an equivalent 
the firm and impartial government which 
the Romans usually bestowed on subject 
provinces. The age was ripe for a Saviour, 
and nowhere riper than in Judea. 

Looked at from its human consequences 
alone, the birth of the Saviour was the most 
momentous event in the annals of mankind. 
The Christianity born in that stable did not 
change human nature, but even alloyed as 
it afterward became, it gave a higher, 
purer, more inspiring and more exalting re- 
ligious ideal than the world had ever 
known. However absurd the divisions 
among Christians of the earlier centuries 
on technical points of doctrine may appear 
to us now, the Christian ideal was at least 
always and entirely free from the impurity 
and depravity which characterized the 
imaginary population of Olympus. The 
Christians offered a God who could be wor- 
shiped without blush or reservation, a 
Christ who appealed to the noblest senti- 
ments and to the purest sympathies, a faith 
which rested on divine love as its corner- 
stone and brotherly love and charity as the 
chief pillars of its creed. 



World's History. 15 

Men learned that there was something to 
hope for, something to gain, which Caesar 
and his legions could not achieve, which a 
tyrant's tortures could not tear from them, 
which the fires of persecution could not re- 
duce to ashes. They learned that the 
world, its ambitions, its strife and its fleet- 
ing indulgences, were as vapor compared 
with the promise of everlasting bliss in the 
bosom of the ever-loving God; that the 
pomp and parade of realty and riches were 
to the wealth of the purified soul as tinsel 
to the stars, and that the poorest slave in 
Iberian mines might, if he lived a Christ- 
like life, stand nearer the throne of God 
than the ruler of an empire. 

No wonder that doctrine such as this 
amazed and aroused the masters of ancient 
civilization, and that from the banks of the 
Tiber to the frontiers of Parthia the fires 
were lighted and the irons were heated to 
efface from the earth a religion which 
taught that Caesar was brother to his serfs. 
And the struggle went on from emperor to 
emperor, from century to century, between 
all the powers of the known world on the 
one side and the zeal of undying faith, the 
supreme confidence of imperishable love, on 
the other side — and at length the Nazarene 
was conqueror, the manger triumphed, the 
Babe of Bethlehem became the Romans' 
God. 



1 6 Turning Points in the 



IL— CANOSSA AND RIALTO. 

It is a long step from Bethlehem to Ca- 
nossa ; it is a long step from Constantine to 
Canossa, and from the bishop of Rome, who 
called himself "servant of the servants of 
God," to the Pope with his heel on the 
neck of an emperor. I have no room in 
this book to trace the origin of the papal 
power. The supremacy of the Roman See 
appears to have been generally recognized 
by the Western churches for centuries be- 
fore the great Hildebrand came upon the 
scene, and sought to convert that suprem- 
acy into an absolutism, both spiritual and 
temporal. In the view of the vast majority 
of believers, the spiritual weapon hurled 
by the hand of the successor of St. Peter 
was as vivid as the lightning's flash, and 
much more terrible, for the lightning could 
only kill the body, while the papal anathema 
doomed both soul and body to everlasting 
tv/rments. Occasionally a prince, intoxi- 
cated by the adulation of parasites, and 
the possession of unlimited power over the 
property and lives of millions of subjects, 
challenged the hostility of the pope, and 
he might, perhaps, achieve a momentary 
success, but every day his cause was sure 
to become weaker and less hopeful. Natu- 
ral calamities were regarded as expressions 



World 's History. 17 

of divine displeasure, and the very stars in 
their courses seemed to be warring against 
him. His trusted confidants, who might 
have recklessly applauded his resolution 
and courage in the beginning, shrank from 
his presence as from that of a leper, and 
the loyalty of his subjects was chilled by 
the thought that their prince was the 
enemy of God. His mind was irritated, 
his conscience tortured, and at length life 
appeared to be intolerable without recon- 
ciliation to the Vicar of Christ. 

Such was the condition of Christendom 
when Hildebrand, a monk, the son of a car- 
penter of Siena, in Tuscany, obtained an 
ascendency in the papal court. Hildebrand 
was one of those men who, in the ever-mov- 
ing caravan of historical characters, loom 
above their contemporaries like a giant 
among pigmies. His was not a lovable 
nature. He possessed an unconquerable 
will and an inflexible singleness of purpose, 
combined with that magnetic force which 
compels the common to recognize the master 
mind. There is no reason to doubt his 
sincerity, or even to suppose that he was 
consciously actuated by ambitious or selfish 
motives. The last words of his life — ' ' I 
have loved justice and hated iniquity, and 
therefore I die in exile" — were doubtless 
from his heart. To him the cause of the 
Church was the cause of justice; its defeat 



1 8 Turning Points in the 

the triumph of iniquity. Hildebrand aimed 
to carry out to its logical conclusion the 
doctrine that the pope is the Vicar of Christ 
upon earth ; that the papal authority being 
of divine origin is superior to any earthly 
jurisdiction, and that the Roman pontiff, in 
virtue of his sacred office, is invested with 
the power to direct and govern all affairs, 
both spiritual and temporal. He essayed 
to establish through his legates papal super- 
vision over the strictly secular acts of sov- 
ereign princes, to summon them to his feet 
to answer accusations of maladministration, 
and, in a word, to make Christendom one 
vast theocracy, with the pope as the inter- 
preter and oracle of the divine will. He 
endeavored to sever all ties which bound 
the ecclesiastical order to the service of the 
State, and to make the State the servant, 
as he claimed it to be, the creature of the 
Church. He tried to enforce the most rigid 
celibacy, so that the priesthood might not 
be diverted by the vexations and pleasures 
of the family relation from the single object 
of the aggrandizement of the pontificate. 
In 1073, the son of the carpenter of Siena 
ascended the chair of St. Peter, and as- 
sumed the title of Gregory VII. He spent 
the early period of his pontificate in enforc- 
ing stricter discipline among the clergy, 
and in strengthening himself for the com- 
ing struggle with the young and arrogant 



World's History. 19 

emperor of Germany. Henry IV. was a 
brave and successful soldier, but he was of 
resentful disposition, hasty and unstable in 
action, and licentious in conduct. His 
extravagances kept him always in want of 
money, and he replenished his treasury by 
the sale of episcopal sees to incapable and 
unworthy men. Gregory admonished the 
emperor to cease his simoniacal practices 
but without effect. In 1074 the pope sum- 
moned a council at Rome, which pronounced 
an anathema against all persons guilty of 
simon3^, and likewise ordered the deposi- 
tion of priests who lived in concubinage. 
In 1075 another council prohibited princes, 
under pain of excommunication, from giv- 
ing investiture of sees or abbeys, by con- 
ferring the ring and crosier. 

The emperor continued to dispose of 
the episcopal dignity and emoluments for 
money, without heeding the admonition of 
the pontiff, or the anathema of the council. 
Gregory, who was now thoroughly aroused, 
summoned Henry to Rome; not only to 
account for his defiance of ecclesiastical 
laws, but also to answer charges of secular 
misgovernment preferred against him by 
his subjects. Henry, hotly indignant at 
what he considered to be a gross insult to 
the majesty, and encroachment upon the 
prerogatives of the imperial crown, caused 
a diet of the empire to be assembled at 



20 Turning Points in the 

Worms, which fulminated a sentence of 
deposition and excommunication against 
Gregory; and the emperor addressed a mis- 
sive, informing the Roman pontiff of the 
action of the diet, to ' 'the false monk, Hil- 
debrand. " Gregor} T replied by an edict 
excommunicating the emperor, depriving 
him of his kingdoms of Germany and Italy, 
and releasing his subjects from their alle- 
giance, and forbidding them to obey their 
sovereign. Henry soon found that he had 
bearded a foe more formidable than any he 
had faced on the field of battle. Disloyal 
nobles rose in rebellion against him, and 
claimed that the}^ were carrying out the 
will of Heaven in attacking a monarch ac- 
cursed by the Vicar of Christ. Henry was 
deserted by the prelates who had aided in 
his attempt to drive Gregory from the papal 
throne, but who now hastened to make 
peace with their ecclesiastical Caesar. Even 
the near friends of the emperor avoided 
his presence, and he found himself a prince 
without courtiers, a ruler without subjects. 
He sank from the height of arrogance into 
utter despondency, and resolved, as a last 
desperate resort, to throw himself on the 
mercy of the Roman pontiff. 

AN IMPERIAL SUPPLIANT. 

Accompanied by his faithful Bertha and 
a single attendant, Henry crossed the Alps, 



World's History. 21 

and proceeded to Canossa, a fortress near 
Reggio, where Gregory was the guest of 
his devoted adherent, the Countess Matilda. 
The emperor was admitted into an outer 
court of the castle, and remained there 
from morning until evening, for three suc- 
cessive days, clad in a shirt of hair, and 
with naked feet, while Gregory, shut up 
with the countess, appeared to ignore his 
presence. On the fourth day the pope 
condescended to grant absolution to his 
humbled enemy, but on condition that he 
should not resume the insignia of imperial 
power until the pontiff had determined 
whether or not his kingdoms should be re- 
stored to him. 

********* 
Canossa did not bring an end to the 
struggle between pope and emperor, which 
was soon resumed, and continued with vary- 
ing fortunes. The conflict reached its 
fiercest point when Frederick Barbarossa 
directed all the power of the German em- 
pire to the crushing of Pope Alexander III. 
The pope wandered from court to court, 
from kingdom to kingdom, a fugitive and a 
suppliant, vainly begging the princes of 
Christendom to champion the cause of the 
Church, while the fairest regions of Italy 
were desolated by contending armies 
shouting the war cry of "Guelph!" or 
"Ghibelin!" 



22 Turning Points in the 

The decisive battle of Legnano, when the 
imperial army was totally crushed by the 
forces of the Guelphic confederacy, did not 
break the proud spirit of Frederick. When 
the Venetians, in behalf of Alexander, 
made overtures to Barbarossa with a view 
to an amicable settlement, he answered: 
' ■ Go and tell your prince and his people 
that Frederick, king of Romans, demands 
at their hands a fugitive and a foe ; that, 
if they refuse to deliver him to me, I shall 
deem and declare them the enemies of my 
empire; and that I will pursue them by 
land and by sea, until I have planted my 
victorious eagles on the gates of St. 
Mark's." 

The islanders were not daunted by this 
arrogant menace, and they got ready to 
make a desperate defence against the 
armada which, under Otho Hohenstauffen, 
the son of the emperor, was preparing to 
invade their lagoons. The Venetians met 
the squadron of Barbarossa off Salboro, 
seven miles distant from Pirano (May 26, 
1 177). The imperialists numbered seventy- 
five sail; the islanders only thirty-four; 
but the latter were inspired by every mo- 
tive that could nerve the arm or stimulate 
the courage. The fight lasted for six 
hours, and ended in the utter rout of the 
imperial fleet. Otho himself was captured, 
and forty of his vessels fell into the hands 



World's History. 23 

of the conquerors, besides two which 
foundered during the action. Pope Alex- 
ander met the victors at the landing-place 
on their return, and in token of his appre- 
ciation of their invaluable services to his 
cause, he bestowed upon Venice the perpet- 
ual dominion of the ocean. 

pope's heeiv on Cesar's neck. 

Barbarossa was now willing to listen to 
the proposals which he had so wrathfully 
rejected but a few months before, and it was 
arranged that a congress should meet at 
Rialto and discuss and ratify the terms of 
peace. The emperor likewise signified his 
desire to be readmitted within the pale of the 
Church, and Alexander acceded to his re- 
quest. Frederick arrived in Venice on the 
twenty-third of July, and was received in 
a manner befitting his imperial station, and 
the dignity of the republic of which he 
was the guest. On the morning of the 
twenty-fourth, a procession of the doge, 
nobles and clergy of Venice escorted Barba- 
rossa to St. Mark's, where the pope sat in 
state, arrayed in his pontifical robes, and 
surrounded by the ambassadors of Sicily, 
France and England, the delegates of the 
free cities and a throng of peers and cardi- 
nals, bishops and archbishops. Assuming 
a lowly attitude the emperor approached 
the papal throne, and, casting off his purple 



24 Turning Points in the 

mantle, prostrated himself before the pope. 
The sufferings and persecutions of eighteen 
years recurred at that moment to the mem- 
ory of His Holiness, and a sincere and pro- 
found conviction that he was the instrument 
chosen of Heaven to proclaim the predes- 
tined triumph of right might have actuated 
the pontiff, as he planted his foot on the 
neck of the emperor, and borrowing the 
words of David, cried: ' 'Thou shalt go on 
the lion and the adder; the young lion and 
the dragon shalt thou tread under thy feet. ' ' 
"It is not to thee, but to St. Peter, that I 
kneel, " muttered the fallen tyrant. "Both 
to me and to St. Peter, ' ' insisted Ranuci, 
pressing his heel still more firmly on the 
neck of Frederick ; and as soon as the latter 
appeared to acquiesce, the pope relaxed his 
hold, and suffered His Majesty to rise. 

A Te Deum closed this remarkable cere- 
mony, and, on quitting the cathedral, the 
emperor held the sacred stirrup, and as- 
sisted his tormentor to mount. Barbarossa 
continued ever after to be on friendly terms 
with Rome, and the old emperor perished 
in the river Calycadnus, in Cilicia, while 
leading the Third Crusade against the 
Moslems. 

********* 

PAPAL ABSOLUTISM. 

The papal power may be said to have 
reached its apogee during the reign of 



World's History. 25 

Innocent III., who was crowned with the 
tiara, after the demise of Celestine, in 1197. 
Born of a noble Roman family, versed in 
all the learning of the mediaeval schools, 
deeply imbued with the principles to which 
Hildebrand had been a martyr, and yet in 
the flush and vigor of early manhood, the 
new pope speedily showed a purpose to sub- 
ject the whole world to his domineering 
will, and to make himself the ruler of the 
earth, the prince of princes. In a com- 
munication to the league of Tuscan com- 
munes, Innocent averred that "as God 
created two luminaries, one superior for the 
day, and the other inferior for the night, 
which last owes its splendor entirely to the 
first, so he has disposed that the regal dig- 
nity should be but a reflection of the splen- 
dor of the papal authority, and entirely 
subordinate to it. ' ' He required an oath 
of allegiance from the prefect of Rome, thus 
abolishing forever the authority of the Ger- 
man empire over that city ; he drove from 
the dominions of the Church the imperial 
feudatories and took possession of their 
territories in the name of the Roman See. 
He asserted the papal suzerainty over Sicily, 
and obtained from Constance, regent of that 
kingdom for her infant son, Frederick II., 
an acknowledgment of the pontifical claims; 
and, after the death of Constance, he him- 
self assumed the regency. 



26 Turning Points in the 

Innocent decided the contest for the im- 
perial throne in favor of Otho, the Guelph 
candidate. He afterward, in 1210, deposed 
Otho, and caused his own ward, young 
Frederick II., to be crowned emperor at 
Aix-la-Chapelle, with the approval of the 
Fourth Lateran Council. He excommuni- 
cated Philip Augustus, of France, because 
that monarch had repudiated his wife, In- 
gerburga, of Denmark, and married Agnes 
de Meranie. The French king persisting 
in his defiance of the ecclesiastical and 
moral law, Innocent laid an interdict upon 
his dominions. The performance of public 
worship was strictly prohibited, the churches 
were closed, the dying were denied the con- 
solations of religion, and the dead lay un- 
buried. Neither Philip nor his subjects 
could long sustain the horrors of such a sit- 
uation, and the king relieved himself and 
his kingdom from the papal curse by re- 
ceiving back the wife he had discarded. 
When Alfonso IX., of Leon and Castile, 
took as his queen his own niece, the daugh- 
ter of Sancho, king of Portugal, Innocent 
first remonstrated, and when remonstrance 
was found to be in vain, he laid the domin- 
ions of the offending princes under interdict, 
and did not remove the ban until the 
scandal ceased. 

John Lackland took an oath of fealty to 
the Roman See, and delivered to the papal 



World's History. 27 

envoy a charter testifying that he surren- 
dered to Innocent and to his successors for- 
ever the kingdom of England and the 
lordship of Ireland, to be held as fiefs, on 
condition of the payment to the pope of a 
tribute of seven hundred marks of silver for 
England, and three hundred for Ireland. 
Peter II., of Aragon, voluntarily made 
himself a vassal of Rome, in order to secure 
his dynasty against the jealous ambition of 
his powerful lieges, and bound himself and 
his successors to an annual payment of two 
hundred pieces of gold. John, duke of 
Bavaria, Premislas, of Bohemia, and Leo, 
of Armenia, accepted kingly crowns from 
Innocent. John, of Bulgaria, had long 
boasted that he was a vassal only of the 
pope. Hungary was acknowledged by its 
monarch to be a fief of the Holy See, and 
Denmark bowed to the power which had 
vindicated the honor and avenged the 
wrongs of her n^al daughter. Even Nor- 
way felt the weight of papal censure, and 
distant Iceland listened with respect and 
fear to the admonitions of a legate from 
the court of Rome. 



28 Tiiming Points in the 



III. -THE FIRST BIBLE PRINTED. 

An agency most potent in preparing 
Europe for the Reformation was the inven- 
tion of printing. The monkish scribes 
would certainly have taken no pains to 
spread doctrine which they considered 
heretical, and the people would have re- 
mained in ignorance of all arguments 
tending to disparage the supremacy and 
infallibility of Rome. 

It is needless to go into the controversy 
as to whether Johannes Gutenberg or Lau- 
rens Coster was the pioneer of the printing- 
press. ''While the learned of Italy," says 
Hallam, "were eagerly exploring their re- 
cent acquisitions of manuscripts, deciphered 
with difficulty, and slowly circulated from 
hand to hand, a few obscure Germans had 
gradually perfected the most important dis- 
cover recorded in the annals of mankind. 
The invention of printing, so far from be- 
ing the result of philosophical sagacity, 
does not appear to have been suggested by 
any regard for the higher branches of liter 
ature, or to bear any other relation than 
that of coincidence to their revival in Italy. 
The question why it was struck out at that 
particular time must be referred to that 
disposition of unknown causes which we 
call accident. 



World' s History. 29 

1 ' Two or three centuries earlier, we can- 
not but acknowledge, the discovery would 
have been almost equally acceptable. But 
the invention of paper seems to have nat- 
urally preceded those of engraving and 
printing. It is generally agreed that play- 
ing-cards, which have been traced far back 
in the fourteenth century, gave the first 
notion of taking off impressions from en- 
graved figures upon wood. The second 
stage, or rather the second application, of 
this art, was the representation of saints 
and other religious devices, several in- 
stances of which are still extant. Some of 
these are accompanied with an entire page 
of illustrative text, cut into the same wooden 
block. This process is indeed far removed 
from the invention that has given immor- 
tality to the names of Faust, Schoeffer 
and Gutenberg, yet it probably led to 
the consideration of means whereby it 
might be rendered less operose and incon- 
venient. 

"Whether movable wooden characters 
were ever employed in any entire work is 
very questionable — the opinion that re- 
ferred their use to L,aurens Coster, of Haar- 
lem, not having stood the test of more ac- 
curate investigation. They appear, how- 
ever, in the capital letters of some early 
printed books. But no expedient of this 
kind could have fulfilled the great purposes 



30 Turning Points in the 

of this invention until it was perfected by- 
pounding metal types in a matrix or mould, 
the essential characteristic of printing, as 
distinguished from other arts that bear 
some analogy to it. 

''The first book that issued from the 
presses of Faust and his associates at Mentz 
was an edition of the Vulgate, commonly 
called the Mazarine Bible, a copy having 
been discovered in the library that owes 
its name to Cardinal Mazarin at Paris. 
This is supposed to have been printed be- 
tween the years 1450 and 1455. In 1457 
an edition of the Psalter appeared, and in 
this the invention was announced to the 
world in a boasting colophon, though cer- 
tainly not unreasonably bold. Another 
edition of the Psalter, one of an ecclesiasti- 
cal book, Durand's account of liturgical 
offices, one of the Constitutions of Pope 
Clement V., and one of a popular treatise on 
general science, called the Catholicon, filled 
up the interval till 1462, when the second 
Mentz Bible proceeded from the same 
printers. This, in the opinion of some, is 
the earliest book in which cast types were 
employed — those of the Mazarine Bible 
having been cut with the hand. But this 
is a controverted point. 

"In 1465, Faust and Schoeffer published 
an edition of Cicero's Offices, the first trib- 
ute of the new art to polite literature. Two 



World's History. 31 

pupils of their school, Sweynheim and Pan- 
nartz, migrated the same year into Italy, 
and printed Donatus's grammar and the 
works of Iyactantius at the monastery of 
Subiaco, in the neighborhood of Rome. 
Venice had the honor of extending her 
patronage to John, of Spira, the first who 
applied the art on an extensive scale to the 
publication of classical writers. Several 
authors came forth from his press in 1470; 
and during the next ten years a multitude 
of editions were published in various parts 
of Italy. 

"Though, as we may judge from their 
present scarcity, these editions were by no 
means numerous in respect of impressions, 
yet, contrasted with the dilatory process of 
copying manuscripts, they were like a new 
mechanical power in machinery, and gave 
a wonderfully accelerated impulse to the 
intellectual cultivation of mankind. From 
the era of these first editions, proceeding 
from the Spiras, Zarot, Janson, or Sweyn- 
heim and Pannartz, literature must be 
deemed to have altogether revived in Italy. 
The sun was now fully above the horizon, 
though countries less fortunately circum- 
stanced did not immediately catch his 
beams ; and the restoration of ancient learn- 
ing in France and England cannot be con- 
sidered as by any means effectual, even at 
the close of the fifteenth century." 



32 Turning Points in the 

Of the tremendous influence of the print- 
ing-press in spreading religious as well as 
secular knowledge, we have all-sufficient evi- 
dence in the decree of the French Diocletian, 
Francis I., who in 1535 ordered the abo- 
lition of printing "that means of propa- 
gating heresies, ' ' and forbade the printing 
of any book under penalty of death. It is 
true that this decree, made all the more 
atrocious by the fact that the king who is- 
sued it was himself a man of letters, was 
revoked for very shame about six weeks 
later, but the spirit which prompted it 
shows that, before the printing-press had 
been in operation for a century, it was 
hated and dreaded by bigots and tyrants 
alike. 



J& 



World's History. 33 

IV.— GUNPOWDER VS. CHIVALRY. 

Hardly less important than the invention 
of printing was the introduction of gun- 
powder as an efficient agent in war. Gun- 
powder, or something very like it, had 
been known for many centuries in the 
Bast, and is even said by a Greek historian 
to have been used by Indian armies in the 
time of Alexander. The Greek-fire used 
to defend Constantinople against the Sara- 
cens was in composition very like gunpow- 
der, but it was not a propellant. It was an 
inflammable substance, which, projected by 
means of arrows, or through a tube, spread 
destruction and confusion among the enemy. 
Greek-fire, however, was of little or no 
value in open warfare, and until gunpowder 
made it possible to kill at a considerable 
distance, the knight in armor was master 
of the field. Battles were fought by hand- 
to-hand conflict, or by archery, which de- 
cided Cressy, Agincourt and other impor- 
tant engagements. It is an interesting fact 
that the English were always superior to 
the French as archers, and that the French 
kings had to hire Scottish archers to make 
headway against the English. The English 
archers were organized in large divisions, 
and the dense masses of arrows falling 
among the foe often caused a panic, and 
opened the way for an effective onslaught. 



34 Turni?ig Points in the 

It may be needless to say that the use of 
artillery in mediaeval battles did very little 
damage. The victory of Cressy was due to 
the archers, and not to two or three smooth- 
bore "cannon," with crude gunpowder 
which propelled a few balls into the hostile 
ranks. 

While the cannon of Cressy made but 
little noise, they sounded the doom of chiv- 
alry. In the fifteenth century artillery 
came into general use, both in land and 
naval operations, and armor no longer pre- 
sented an impregnable defence to ordinary 
weapons of war. Indeed, the cumbersome 
mail, interfering with rapid movement, and 
useless against artillery, became an impedi- 
ment that was gradually discarded, piece 
by piece, save for a stout helmet and the 
cuirass. Suits of armor were laid aside in 
ancestral halls among relics of the past, and 
knight and peasant went forth to battle on 
an equal footing. Gunpowder was a great 
leveller. It respected neither pennon nor 
pedigree. It was a mighty agency in pro- 
moting equality by putting all classes on 
the same plane in the arena of arms. It 
brought an end to the robber barons by 
placing in the hands of sovereign and people 
a weapon before which castle walls crum- 
bled, and compared with which the lance 
was but a toy. 

Much has been said about gunpowder 



World's History. 35 

having made war less terrible and san- 
guinary. The arguments in support of 
this assertion are more plausible than 
sound, and seem scarcely sustained by the 
records of the Thirty Years' War, the wars 
of Napoleon, in which millions perished, 
the Franco-German war, and our own great 
civil conflict. "War is cruelty, and you 
cannot refine it, ' ' said General Sherman to 
the city council of Atlanta, and he never 
spoke more truthfully. War is at least as 
destructive as before gunpowder vanished 
archer and armor, and spread its pall of 
smoke over the carnage of the battlefield. 

Nevertheless, the destruction is not so 
brutalizing as in the old times when fight- 
ing was done with sword and battle-axe, 
and each encounter was a series of duels 
between men of different armies. In these 
days the soldier seldom knows whether he 
has killed anyone or not. Thousands may 
fall, but the combatants are, with rare excep- 
tions, spared the knowledge of having sent 
the deadly missile which robbed a fellow- 
man of life, and some home of father, hus- 
band or son. In this regard gunpowder has 
had a humane and humanizing influence. 

Gunpowder has been the strong right 
arm of civilization in bringing new and 
savage countries under the power of Chris- 
tianity. Firearms enabled Cortez to sub- 
due Mexico, and Irmak to conquer Siberia. 



36 Turning Points in the 

Without firearms the Pilgrims would have 
been helpless, and New Amsterdam would 
have been the grave of the thrifty settlers 
from Holland. The wondrous explorations 
at the close of the fifteenth century would 
have been fruitless but for the artificial 
lightning and thunder which carried terror 
to the breast of Aztec and Iroquois, which 
saved De Soto from angry savages, and 
brought the affrighted Tartars to the feet 
of Ivan the Terrible. It is a noteworthy 
fact, also, that England, which speedily took 
front rank as the champion of civil and 
religious progress, was swift to improve 
the use of artillery, and even in the reign 
of Henry VIII. , had cannon of a superior 
standard on her vessels of war. This en- 
abled the English to defeat the Spanish 
Armada, to assume the mastery of the seas, 
and to foster and protect the colonies planted 
by English exiles and adventurers. 

In breaking down chivalry, gunpowder 
undoubtedly helped to pave the way for the 
Reformation. The reformers did not, as a 
rule, belong to the class of chivalry, and 
under mediaeval conditions of warfare they 
would easily have been crushed. Armed 
with artillery they were able to meet their 
adversaries on terms that gave promise of 
success. Gunpowder was in more than one 
respect a useful ally to the Bible. 



World's History. 37 

V.— VASCO DA GAMA'S VOYAGE. 

Nothing but terrific heat which scorched 
and burned any navigator unlucky enough 
to come within its fatal sphere — nothing 
but death and annihilation was supposed in 
the popular mind of the fifteenth century 
to await the adventurer who should seek 
to penetrate beyond the northern coast line 
of Africa. As the North was bounded by 
darkness and eternal mountains of ice, so 
the South was assumed to have its barrier 
of fiery rays from a consuming sun, making 
life impossible and the world beyond im- 
penetrable. It was a comforting belief for 
the Italian republics enjoying their mo- 
nopoly of trade with India and nearer Asia, 
but not so pleasing to the hardy seamen of 
France and England and Portugal. Freed 
from anxiety for their own independence, 
as the power of the Moors declined in the 
peninsula, the Portuguese looked with wist- 
ful gaze toward those Oriental treasure- 
lands which had enriched the merchants 
of Venetia and Genoa. The vulgar belief 
that there was no ocean pathway around 
Africa was not shared by all. "The grand 
impulse to discovery," says Washington 
Irving, ' ' was not given by chance, but was 
the deeply meditated effect of one master 
mind." This was Prince Henry, of Portu- 
gal, son of John the First, surnamed the 



3S Turning Poi?its in the 

Avenger, and Philippa, of Lancaster, sister 
of Henry the Fourth, of England. Having 
accompanied his father into Africa, in an 
expedition against the Moors at Ceuta, 
Prince Henry received much information 
concerning the coast of Guinea and other 
regions in the interior hitherto unknown 
to Europeans, and conceived an idea that 
important discoveries were to be made by 
navigating along the western coast of 
Africa. On returning to Portugal, this 
idea became his ruling thought. With- 
drawing from the tumult of a court to a 
country retreat in the Algarves, near Sagres, 
in the neighborhood of Cape St. Vincent, 
and in full view of the ocean, he drew 
around him men eminent in science, and 
prosecuted the study of those branches of 
knowledge connected with the maritime 
arts. He was an able mathematician, and 
made himself master of all the astronomy 
known to the Arabians of Spain. On study- 
ing the works of the ancients, he found 
what he considered abundant proofs that 
Africa was circumnavigable. 

It was the grand idea of Prince Henry, 
by circumnavigating Africa to open a 
direct and easy route to the source of Asian 
commerce, to turn it in a golden tide upon 
his country. He was, however, before the 
age in thought, and had to counteract ig- 
norance and prejudice, and to endure the 



World's History. 39 

delays to which vivid and penetrating 
minds are subjected, from the tardy co- 
operation of the dull and the doubtful. 
The navigation of the Atlantic was yet in 
its infancy. Mariners looked with distrust 
upon a boisterous expanse, which appeared 
to have no opposite shore, and feared to 
venture out of sight of the landmarks. 
Every bold headland and far-stretching 
promontory was a wall to bar their progress. 
They crept timorously along the Barbary 
shores, and thought they had accomplished 
a wonderful expedition when they had ven- 
tured a few degrees beyond the Straits of 
Gibraltar. Cape Nun was long the limit 
of their daring; they hesitated to double its 
rocky point, beaten by winds and waves, 
and threatening to thrust them forth upon 
the raging deep. * 

Prince Henry established a naval college, 
and erected an observatory at Sagres, and 
he invited thither the most eminent pro- 
fessors of the nautical faculties ; appointing 
as president, James, of Mallorca, a man 
learned in navigation, and skilled in mak- 
ing charts and instruments. 

The effects of this establishment were 
soon apparent. All that was known rela- 
tive to geography and navigation was 
gathered together and reduced to system. 



♦Washington Irving. 



40 T?ir?iing Points in the 

A vast improvement took place in maps. 
The compass was also brought into 
more general use, especially among the 
Portuguese, rendering the mariner more 
bold and venturous, by enabling him 
to navigate in the most gloomy day 
and iii the darkest night. Encouraged 
by these advantages, and stimulated 
by the munificence of Prince Henry, 
the Portuguese marine became signalized 
for the hardihood of its enterprises and the 
extent of its discoveries. Cape Bojador 
was doubled ; the region of the tropics pene- 
trated and divested of its fancied terrors; 
the greater part of the African coast, from 
Cape Blanco to Cape de Verde, explored ; 
and the Cape de Verde and Azore Islands, 
which lay three hundred leagues distant 
from the continent, were rescued from the 
oblivious empire of the ocean. To secure 
the quiet prosecution and full enjoyment of 
his discoveries, Henry obtained the pro- 
tection of a papal bull, granting to the 
crown of Portugal sovereign authority over 
all the lands it might discover in the At- 
lantic, to India inclusive, with plenary in- 
dulgence to all who should die in these 
expeditions; at the same time menacing, 
with the terrors of the Church, all who 
should interfere in these Christian con- 
quests. 



World's History. 41 

Henry died on the thirteenth of Novem- 
ber, 1473, without accomplishing the great 
object of his ambition. It was not until 
many years afterward that Vasco da Gama, 
pursuing with a Portuguese fleet the track 
Henry had pointed out, realized his anticipa- 
tions by doubling the Cape of Good Hope, 
sailing along the southern coast of India, 
and thus opening a highway for commerce 
to the opulent regions of the Bast. On 
July 8, 1497, Vasco da Gama, an intrepid 
mariner, started from Lisbon in command 
of four vessels, fitted out by King Manuel, 
to discover the route to India. For months 
the little fleet sailed along the western coast 
of Africa, its progress attended by frightful 
storms and the difficulties of the enterprise 
multiplied by the rebellious conduct of the 
sailors. Da Gama sternly punished the 
mutineers, and at length rounded the .south- 
ern extremity of Africa. At Melinda, on 
the eastern coast, the great navigator found 
a competent pilot, a native of India, who 
appeared to understand the astrolabe, com- 
pass and quadrant. Under the guidance of 
this man da Gama struck out boldly across 
the Indian Ocean and arrived at Calicut in 
India, May 20, 1498. 

This was the beginning of Portuguese, 
and, indeed, of European empire in India. 
It was the beginning of the maritime great- 
ness of Holland and England, as well as of 



42 Turning Points in the 

Portugal. Vasco da Gama's expedition 
opened the gateway of the Orient to the 
maritime nations of western Europe, and 
brought the rich and vast regions of Asia 
into direct communication with the more 
progressive nations of Europe. It was the 
turning point in history which led to the 
foundation of England's great Indian em- 
pire, to the discovery of the Australian 
Continent and ultimately to the opening 
of Japan and China to western intercourse 
and association. It is not to be forgotten 
that da Gama's expedition was the realiza- 
tion of the dream which inspired the voyage 
of Columbus, and that, from the stand- 
point of that day Columbus failed in en- 
deavoring to accomplish that which da 
Gama successfully achieved. Columbus 
discovered America; da Gama uncovered 
southern Africa and Asia. It may be 
questioned even now whether the achieve- 
ment of Columbus was as important in its 
consequences as that of da Gama. At the 
same time there is to be considered, in 
judging the comparative merits of the two 
men, that Columbus conceived and planned 
and carried out his own mighty adventure, 
while da Gama carried out a scheme con- 
ceived and planned by others. 



World's History. 43 



VI.— FIRST VOYAGE OF COLUMBUS. 

Columbus! What mighty thoughts are 
crowded in the name of him who lifted the 
veil of ages from a virgin world ! No other 
great achievement in history was so sig- 
nally the work of one man and one mind as 
the discovery of America. To Columbus is 
due all the credit and fame of that discov- 
ery, however honorable and creditable in 
others the fact that they dimly discerned 
the magnitude of his undertaking and gave 
him the assistance without which he could 
not have succeeded. No life — not even that 
of Washington — is so replete with lessons 
of encouragement for high and noble en- 
deavor through difficulties and against ob- 
stacles that might seem to be insuperable. 
Men may dispute as to where the bones of 
Columbus rest, but there can be no dispute 
as to the monument which marks his fame 
— it is the Continent of America. 

In these days when much is being writ- 
ten — and much of it probably untrue — about 
the early struggles of great men, the disap- 
pointments and privations which Columbus 
endured so manfully and so patiently have 
a renewed and pathetic interest. We per- 
ceive that, like many others of the world's 
heroes, he succeeded because he deserved to 
succeed ; because he had the will, the energy, 



44 Turning 1 Points in the 

the indomitable resolution which not only 
deserved but commanded success. Colum- 
bus would doubtless have succeeded even 
had Spain rejected him; the genius which 
won the attention and confidence of Isabella 
would surely not always have met with re- 
pulse at the hands of those who controlled 
the means necessary to make that genius 
fruitful. 

********* 

The chief crisis in the career of Colum- 
bus was that which ended in the determina- 
tion of Queen Isabella to support his 
enterprise. The queen had been persuaded 
by her priestly adviser, Fernando de Tala- 
vera, that it would be degrading to her 
dignity to grant the terms demanded by 
Columbus, to the effect that he should be 
invested with the titles and privileges of 
admiral and viceroy over the countries he 
should discover, with one-tenth of all gains, 
either by trade or conquest. Columbus re- 
fused to abate his conditions, and the ne- 
gotiations were broken off. 

"It is impossible not to admire the great 
constancy of purpose and loftiness of spirit 
displayed by Columbus, ever since he had 
conceived the sublime idea of his discovery. 
More than eighteen years had elapsed since 
his correspondence with Paulo Toscanelli, 
of Florence, wherein he had announced his 
design. The greatest part of that time had 



World's History. 45 

been consumed in applications at various 
courts. During that period, what poverty, 
neglect, ridicule, contumely, and disap- 
pointment had he not suffered i Nothing, 
however, could shake his perseverance, nor 
make him descend to terms which he con- 
sidered beneath the dignity of his enter- 
prise. In all his negotiations he forgot his 
present obscurity ; he forgot his present in- 
digence; his ardent imagination realized the 
magnitude of his contemplated discoveries, 
and he felt himself negotiating about em- 
pire."* 

Though so large a portion of his life had 
worn away in fruitless solicitings ; though 
there was no certainty that the same weary 
career was not to be entered upon at any 
other court ; yet so indignant was he at the 
repeated disappointments he had experi- 
enced in Spain, that he determined to aban- 
don it forever, rather than compromise his 
demands. Taking leave of his friends, 
therefore, he mounted his mule, and sallied 
forth from Santa Fe in the beginning of 
February, 1492, on his way to Cordova, 
whence he intended to depart immediately 
for France. 

When the few friends who were zealous 
believers in the theory of Columbus saw 
him really on the point of abandoning the 



♦Washington Irving. 



46 Turning Points in the 

country, they were filled with distress, con- 
sidering his departure an irreparable loss 
to the nation. Among the number was 
Luis de St. Angel, receiver of the ecclesi- 
astical revenues in Aragon. Determined if 
possible to avert the evil, he obtained an 
immediate audience of the queen, accom- 
panied by Alonzo de Quintanilla. The 
exigency of the moment gave him courage 
and eloquence. He did not confine himself 
to entreaties, but almost mingled reproaches, 
expressing astonishment that a queen who 
had evinced the spirit to undertake so many 
great and perilous enterprises, should hesi- 
tate at one where the loss could be so trif- 
ling, while the gain might be incalculable. 
He reminded her how much might be done 
for the glory of God, the exaltation of the 
Church, and the extension of her own power 
and dominion. What cause of regret to 
herself, of triumph to her enemies, of sor- 
row to her friends, should this enterprise, 
thus rejected by her, be accomplished by 
some other power ! He reminded her what 
fame and dominion other princes had ac- 
quired by their discoveries; here was an 
opportunity to surpass them all. 

St. Angel entreated her majest}^ not to be 
misled by the assertions of learned men, 
that the project was the dream of a vision- 
ary. He vindicated the judgment of Col- 
umbus, and the soundness and practicability 



World's History. 47 

of his plans. Neither would even his fail- 
ure reflect discredit upon the crown. It 
was worth the trouble and expense to clear 
up even a doubt upon a matter of such im- 
portance, for it belonged to enlightened and 
magnanimous princes to investigate ques- 
tions of the kind, and to explore the won- 
ders and secrets of the universe. He stated 
the liberal offer of Columbus to bear an 
eighth of the expense, and informed her 
that all the requisites for this great enter- 
prise consisted but of two vessels and about 
three thousand crowns. 

These and many more arguments were 
urged with that persuasive power which 
honest zeal imparts, and it is said the 
Marchioness of Moya, who was present, ex- 
erted her eloquence to persuade the queen. 
The generous spirit of Isabella was en- 
kindled. It seemed as if, for the first time, 
the subject broke upon her mind in its real 
grandeur, and she declared her resolution 
to undertake the enterprise. 

There was still a moment's hesitation. 
The king looked coldly on the affair, and 
the royal finances were absolutely drained 
by the war. Some time must be given to 
replenish them. How could she draw on 
an exhausted treasury for a measure to 
which the king was adverse! St. Angel 
watched this suspense with trembling 
anxiety. The next moment reassured him. 



48 Turning Points in the 

With an enthusiasm worthy of herself and 
of the cause, Isabella exclaimed, "I under- 
take the enterprise for my own crown of 
Castile, and will pledge my jewels to raise 
the necessary funds." This was the 
proudest moment in the life of Isabella; 
it stamped her renown forever as the 
patroness of the discovery of the New 
World. 

St. Angel, eager to secure this noble im- 
pulse, assured her majesty that there would 
be no need of pledging her jewels, as he was 
ready to advance the necessary funds. His 
offer was gladly accepted ; the funds easily 
came from the coffers of Aragon ; seventeen 
thousand florins were advanced by the ac- 
countant of St. Angel out of the treasury 
of King Ferdinand. That prudent monarch, 
however, took care to have his kingdom in- 
demnified some few years afterward; for in 
remuneration of this loan, a part of the first 
gold brought by Columbus from the New 
World was employed in gilding the vaults 
and ceilings of the royal saloon in the grand 
palace of Saragoza, in Aragon, anciently 
the Aljaferia, or abode of the Moorish 
kings. 

Columbus had pursued his lonely journey 
across the Vega and reached the bridge of 
Pinos, about two leagues from Granada, at 
the foot of the mountain of Elvira, a pass 
famous in the Moorish wars for many a 



. World's History. 49 

desperate encounter between the Christians 
and infidels. Here he was overtaken by a 
courier from the queen, spurring in all speed, 
who summoned him to return to Santa Fe. 
He hesitated for a moment, being loathe to 
subject himself again to the delays and 
equivocations of the court ; when informed, 
however, of the sudden zeal for the enter- 
prise excited in the mind of the queen, and 
the positive promise she had given to under- 
take it, he no longer felt a doubt, but, turn- 
ing the reins of his mule, hastened back 
with joyful alacrity to Santa Fe. 

On arriving at Santa Fe, Columbus had 
an immediate audience of the queen, and 
the benignity with which she received him 
atoned for all past neglect. Through 
deference to the zeal she thus suddenly 
displayed, the king yielded his tardy con- 
currence, but Isabella was the soul of this 
grand enterprise. She was prompted by 
lofty and generous enthusiasm, while the 
king proved cold and calculating in this as 
in all his other undertakings. 

The capitulations were signed by Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella, at the city of Santa Fe, 
in the Vega or plain of Granada, on the 
seventeenth of April, 1492. A letter of 
privilege, or commission to Columbus, of 
similar purport, was drawn out in form, 
and issued by the sovereigns in the city of 
Granada, on the thirtieth of the same month. 



50 Turning Points in the 

In this, the dignities and prerogatives of 
viceroy and governor were made hereditary 
in his family; and he and his heirs were 
authorized to prefix the title of Don to their 
names; a distinction accorded in those days 
only to persons of rank and estate, though 
it has since lost all value, from being univer- 
sally used in Spain. 

All the royal documents issued on this 
occasion bore equally the signatures of 
Ferdinand and Isabella, but her separate 
crown of Castile defrayed all the expense; 
and, during her life, few persons, except 
Castilians, were permitted to establish 
themselves in the new territories. 

The port of Palos was fixed upon as the 
place where the armament was to be fitted 
out, Columbus calculating, no doubt, on the 
co-operation of Martin Alonzo Pinzon, resi- 
dent there, and on the assistance of his 
zealous friend, the prior of the convent La 
Rabida. Before going into the business 
details of this great enterprise, it is due to 
the character of the illustrious man who 
conceived and conducted it, most especially 
to notice the elevated, even though vision- 
ary, spirit by which he was actuated. One 
of his principal objects was undoubtedly 
the propagation of the Christian faith. He 
expected to arrive at the extremity of Asia, 
and to open a direct and easy communica- 
tion with the vast and magnificent empire 



World's History. 51 

of the Grand Khan. The conversion of 
that heathen potentate had, in former times, 
been a favorite aim of Roman pontiffs and 
pious sovereigns, and various missions had 
been sent to the remote regions of the East 
for that purpose. Columbus now consid- 
ered himself about to effect this great work ; 
to spread the light of revelation to the very 
ends of the earth, and thus to be the in- 
strument of accomplishing one of the sub- 
lime predictions of Holy Writ. 



' The difficulties of Columbus did not end 
with his success in engaging the Spanish 
sovereigns as patrons and allies in his enter- 
prise. Weeks elapsed without a vessel be- 
ing procured. Further mandates were 
therefore issued by the sovereigns, ordering 
the magistrates of the coast of Andalusia to 
press into the service any vessels they might 
think proper, belonging to Spanish subjects, 
and to oblige the masters and crew to sail 
with Columbus in whatever direction he 
should be sent by royal command. Juan de 
Penalosa, an officer of the royal household, 
was sent to see that this order was properly 
complied with, receiving two hundred mara- 
vedis a day as long as he was occupied in 
the business, which sum, together with 
other penalties expressed in the mandate, 
was to be exacted from such as should be 



52 Turning Points in the 

disobedient and delinquent. This letter 
was acted upon by Columbus in Palos and 
the neighboring town of Moguer, but appa- 
rently with as little success as the preced- 
ing. The communities of those places were 
thrown into complete confusion; tumults 
took place ; but nothing of consequence was 
effected. At length Martin Alonzo Pinzon 
stepped forward, with his brother Vicente 
Yanez Pinzon, both navigators of great 
courage and ability, owners of vessels, and 
having seamen in their emplo} r . They 
were related, also, to many of the seafaring 
inhabitants of Palos and Moguer, and had 
great influence throughout the neighbor- 
hood. They engaged to sail on the expe- 
dition, and furnished one of the vessels 
required. Others, with their owners and 
crews, were pressed into the service by the 
magistrates under the arbitrary mandate of 
the sovereigns. 

During the equipment of the vessels, 
troubles and difficulties arose among the 
seamen who had been compelled to embark. 
These were fomented and kept up by 
Gomez Rascon and Christoval Quintero, 
owners of the Pinta, one of the ships 
pressed into service. All kinds of obsta- 
cles were thrown in the way, by these 
people and their friends, to retard or defeat 
the voyage. The calkers employed upon 
the vessels did their work in a careless and 



World's History. 53 

imperfect manner, and on being commanded 
to do it over again absconded. Some of 
the seamen who had enlisted willingly re- 
pented of their hardihood, or were dissuaded 
by their relatives, and sought to retract; 
others deserted and concealed themselves. 
Everything had to be effected by the most 
harsh and arbitrary measures, and in de- 
fiance of popular prejudice and opposition. 

The influence and example of the Pinzons 
had a great effect in allaying this opposi- 
tion, and inducing many of their friends 
and relatives to embark. It is supposed 
that they had furnished Columbus with 
funds to pay the eighth part of the expense 
which he was bound to advance. It is also 
said that Martin Alonzo Pinzon was to 
divide with him his share of the profits. 
As no immediate profit, however, resulted 
from this expedition, no claim of the kind 
was ever brought forward. It is certain, 
however, that the assistance of the Pinzons 
was all-important, if not indispensable, 
in fitting out and launching the expe- 
dition. 

After the great difficulties made by vari- 
ous courts in patronizing this enterprise, it 
is surprising how inconsiderable an arma- 
ment was required. It is evident that Col- 
umbus had reduced his requisitions to the 
narrowest limits, lest any great expense 
should cause impediment. Three small 



54 Turning Points in the 

vessels were apparently all that he re- 
quested. Two of them were light barks, 
called caravels, not superior to river and 
coasting craft of more modern days. Rep- 
resentations of this class of vessels exist in 
old prints and paintings. They are delin- 
eated as open, and without deck in the 
centre, but built up high at the prow and 
stern, with forecastles and cabins for the 
accommodation of the crew. Peter Martyr, 
the learned contemporary of Columbus, 
says that only one of the three vessels was 
decked. 



Columbus sailed from Palos on Friday, 
the third of August, 1492. On losing 
sight of this last trace of land, the hearts of 
the crews failed them. They seemed liter- 
ally to have taken leave of the world. Be- 
hind them was everything dear to the heart 
of man; country, family, friends, life itself; 
before them everything was chaos, mystery 
and peril. In the perturbation of the 
moment, they despaired of ever more see- 
ing their homes. Many of the rugged sea- 
men shed tears, and some broke into loud 
lamentations. The admiral tried in every 
way to soothe their distress, and to inspire 
them with his own glorious anticipations. 
He described to them the magnificent coun- 
tries to which he was about to conduct 



World's History. 55 

them ; the islands of the Indian seas teem- 
ing with gold and precious stones; the 
regions of Mangi and Cathay, with their 
cities of unrivaled wealth and splendor. 
He promised them land and riches, and 
everything that could arouse their cupidity 
or inflame their imaginations, nor were 
these promises made for the purposes of 
mere deception ; he certainly believed that 
he should realize them all. 

He now issued orders to the commanders 
of the other vessels, that, in the event of 
separation by any accident, they should 
continue directly westward; but that after 
sailing seven hundred leagues, they should 
lay by from midnight until daylight, as at 
about that distance he confidently expected 
to find land. In the meantime, as he 
thought it possible he might not discover 
land within the distance thus assigned, and 
as he foresaw that the vague terrors already 
awakened among the seamen would increase 
with the space which intervened between 
them and their homes, he commenced a 
stratagem which he continued throughout 
the voyage. He kept two reckonings; one 
correct, in which the true way of the ship 
was noted, and which was retained in 
secret for his own government; in the 
other, which was open to general inspec- 
tion, a number of leagues was daily sub- 
tracted from the sailing of the ship, so that 



56 Turning Points in the 

the crews were kept in ignorance of the real 
distance they had advanced. 

For more than two months Columbus 
sailed over the unknown ocean, quieting as 
best he could the fears of his crew, who 
were about to break out in open mutiny 
when two signs of land fortunately became 
so convincing as not to admit of doubt. At 
length land was clearly seen. The great 
mystery of the ocean was revealed. His 
theory, which had been the scoff of sages, 
was triumphantly established; he had se- 
cured to himself a glory durable as the 
world itself. It is difficult to conceive the 
feelings of such a man at such a moment; 
or the conjectures which must have thronged 
upon his mind, as to the land before him, 
covered with darkness. That it was fruit- 
ful, was evident from the vegetables which 
floated from its shores. He thought, too, 
that he perceived the fragrance of aromatic 
groves. The moving light he had beheld 
proved it the residence of man. But what 
were its inhabitants ? Were they like those 
of the other parts of the globe ; or were they 
some strange and monstrous race, such as 
the imagination was prone in those times to 
give to all remote and unknown regions? 
Had he come upon some wild island far in 
the Indian sea; or was this the famed 
Cipango itself, the object of his golden 
fancies? A thousand speculations of the 



World's History. 57 

kind must have swarmed upon him, as, 
with his anxious crews, he waited for the 
night to pass away, wondering whether the 
morning light would reveal a savage wilder- 
ness, or dawn upon spicy groves, and glit- 
tering fanes, and gilded cities, and all the 
splendor of Oriental civilization. * 



The immediate effect of the discovery of 
America by Columbus was to build up the 
power of Spain. It aroused also the ambi- 
tion of England, of France and of Holland, 
and these countries soon disputed with 
Spain the empire of the New World. North 
America passed under the rule of the Eng- 
lish-speaking races. While Spanish Amer- 
ica sank into a volcanic torpor from which 
it can hardly be said to have emerged, the 
part of the continent controlled by men 
chiefly of Teutonic blood has become a 
highly civilized and most powerful nation, 
the palladium of popular institutions, and 
the pillar of light for those of the human 
race still wandering in the desert of super- 
stition and despotism. 

Spanish America has exerted hardly more 
influence on the affairs of the world than 
the benighted nations of Africa. Its 



*Washington Irving. 



58 



Turning Points in the 



greatness is yet to come, and that greatness 
will be, in all human probability, under 
English speaking auspices, with the United 
States as the guardian and guide of Ameri- 
can liberty. 




World's History. 59 

VII.— SPAIN'S EXPULSION OF THE 
JEWS. 

When it is recalled that the power of 
Spain in the sixteenth century overshad- 
owed Europe, while known America was a 
series of Spanish vice-royalties, and the 
wealth of the Spanish monarchy was ap- 
parently unlimited, it may be imagined 
what Spain could have been with the 
friendly guidance and assistance of the race 
of Disraeli and the Rothschilds. Had 
Spain protected the Jews instead of seeking 
to destroy them, Madrid might have been 
the rallying point and Spain the beneficiary 
of the most talented minds of Hebrew 
origin, and the Spanish dominion have been 
established on an enduring foundation. It 
is impossible to believe that Jewish finan- 
ciers would have permitted Spain to go on 
in the course of ruinous prodigality which 
has left her scarce anything but Spanish 
poverty and pride, or that Jewish statesmen 
would have committed the blunders which 
have reduced the once powerful empire to 
a low place in the second rank of nations. 
The fortunate experience with the Jews of 
England and other countries which have 
treated them well, is the best proof of 
Spanish folly in the expulsion and at- 
tempted extermination of the most brilliant 



60 Turning Points in the 

portion of the Jewish race, of Israelites who 
loved Spain as their native and ancestral 
land, and who would willingly have devoted 
their abilities to building up the power and 
guarding the welfare of the Spanish mon- 
archy. 

The expulsion of the Jews was a suicidal 
act. Retribution was not slow in overtak- 
ing the bigoted dynasty responsible for the 
crime ; the decline of Spain has been grad- 
ual, but without interruption. Battered 
and plundered by the English, overrun by 
the French, and bankrupted in its efforts to 
retain the remnants of its once extensive 
colonial empire, Spain is to-day a mendicant 
at the feet of members of the very race that 
it so infamously persecuted. 



The expulsion of the Jews from the 
Iberian peninsula, as a result of the cruel 
decree issued by Ferdinand and Isabella 
from their court, at Santa Fe, in the same 
year as the discovery of America, was, 
therefore, an important turning point in 
European history. It planted the seed of 
decline in the very foundation of Spain's 
magnificent empire, and it dispersed to 
more tolerant regions of Europe that bright, 
fervid, wealth- promoting and art-loving 
genius which made the Jews of Moorish 
Spain the very leaders of their race. The 



World's History. 61 

Spanish Jews included philosophers, poets 
and sages, men versed alike in the learning 
of the ancients and the science of later cen- 
turies. Some of the most valuable classics 
were preserved in their Arabian transla- 
tions, and to them we are indebted for 
works of great merit that would otherwise 
have been lost to the modern world. The 
Christian kings of that country, influenced 
no doubt by the example of the Moors, 
treated the Jews with favor, until the con- 
quest of Granada left Castile and Aragon 
without a rival power of the Moslem faith 
in the peninsula. The year which witnessed 
the discovery of America witnessed the 
monstrous edict which crushed at one 
blow the Spanish Jews, and brought to 
poverty, ruin, and in many instances a 
miserable death, the most peaceable, pros- 
perous and industrious subjects of Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella. The number driven 
from Spain in consequence of this decree 
has been estimated at from 300,000 to 800,- 
000. It is regarded in Jewish history as a 
calamity as great as the destruction of 
Jerusalem, for indeed Spain had become to 
the Jews another Land of Promise. 

The terror and dismay which over- 
whelmed the Spanish Jews can scarcely be 
imagined. Wailing and lamentation per- 
vaded every dwelling, and resounded in 
every synagogue. Only two resources were 



62 Turning Poznfs in the 

left to those who were unwilling to abjure 
the religion of their forefathers. One was 
to escape into Portugal; the other, to flee 
to Morocco and other countries, where the 
followers of Mahomet, more Christian in 
feeling than the professed followers of 
Christ, would afford them an asylum and 
protection. 

The scenes which occurred among those 
who preferred to escape entirely beyond the 
limits of the Roman Catholic countries, 
were piteous indeed. It happened that 
many of the ships which contained the 
emigrants were too heavily laden, and sank 
after setting sail. Other ships are recorded 
to have taken fire, and been lost amid all 
the horrors of a conflagration at sea. In 
many vessels diseases broke out, which 
carried off immense numbers of the fugi- 
tives. Several captains of vessels ordered 
all their Jewish passengers to be slain as the 
cause of the misfortunes which overtook 
their ships. Many perished by a violent 
storm which swept the deep and drove their 
vessels on the rocks. A famine is said to 
have prevailed in Morocco at the time the 
survivors landed, and a vast number perished 
of hunger ; yet of the survivors, it is said 
that on the Friday they gathered what herbs 
and roots the land afforded, that they might 
keep the ensuing Sabbath according to their 
law. A large number were sold by the 



World's History. 63 

captains of vessels as slaves to the inhab- 
itants of Barbary, because they were unable 
to comply with exorbitant demands for 
passage-money. It is stated by Christian 
writers that as many as thirty thousand Jews 
perished in this exodus. 



In Portugal the Jews were for some time 
treated with tolerance and even with en- 
couragement until King Manuel, in 1496, 
issued an edict banishing them from his 
dominions, and at the same time ordered 
that they should be deprived of all their 
children under fourteen years of age. When 
the Jews became victims of this new perse- 
cution they were overwhelmed with despair, 
and many committed suicide. Some abjured 
their faith, others fled to foreign countries, 
a large number finding refuge in France, 
where they received protection, and became 
prosperous in commerce. Many of the ex- 
iled Jews found homes in Holland, where 
they were received with hospitality by their 
brethren and with tolerance by the people, 
and it is unnecessary to say where lay the 
sympathies of these Jews and their de- 
scendants when the time came for the revolt 
of the Dutch against the tyranny of Spain. 

A multitude of the refugees driven from 
one land to another, sought asylum in what 
might be called the neutral ground between 



64 Turning Points in the 

the Eastern and Western churches. In 
Poland the exiled Jews became an impor- 
tant and influential element, filling the void 
between a prodigal and proud aristocracy 
and a servile and down-trodden peasantry. 
They were the mercantile and trading class 
in a nation which had no traders and mer- 
chants of its own. In Germany the Jews 
were treated, after the fifteenth century, 
with comparative humanity, and while the 
reformers did not look upon them with 
favor, they did not assail them as enemies. 
The Jew in Protestant countries inevitably 
shared in the advantages which attended 
the growth of soul independence, and even 
the very fury of religious strife w T as favor- 
able to him in that the contestants did not 
regard him with the same hatred that they 
felt toward each other. 



In prosperity, as in adversity, the Jews 
clung with tenacity to their ancient creed. 
They were as true to their faith on the 
banks of the Vistula as when, on the Eu- 
phrates, they sang with tears of distant 
Palestine : 

1 ' By the rivers of Babylon there we sat 
down; yea we wept when we remembered 
Zion. We hanged our harps upon the wil- 
lows in the midst thereof. 

"For there they that carried us away 



World's History. 



65 



captive required of us a song, and they that 
wasted us, mirth. Sing us of the songs of 
Zion. 

"How shall we sing the L,ord's song in a 
strange land ? 

"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my 
right hand forget her cunning. 

"If I do not remember thee, let my 
tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth ; if 
I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy." 




66 Turning Points in the 



VIII.— THE REFORMATION. 

Reader, try to imagine yourself in the 
little world of that day when Luther posted 
his theses on the gates of the church at 
Wittenberg — a world bounded on the east 
by Muscovy and India, on the north by the 
midnight sun, on the west by the new con- 
tinent, discovered, but unexplored, and on 
the south by the African desert. Small as 
was the world, few people knew much about 
it outside of their own vicinity. Traveling' 
was slow and difficult, and often dangerous, 
and the man who had visited another coun- 
try than his own was regarded with wonder, 
if not with veneration. Foreign commerce 
was confined to the Italian republics, the 
Hanseatic cities and the ports on the western 
coasts and isles which had caught from 
Italy and the free towns some breath of 
commercial enterprise and adventure. 
Higher education was monopolized by the 
universities and a few talented men like 
Erasmus, who had scaled the heights of 
knowledge against difficulties almost insur- 
mountable, and were turning the search- 
light of intelligence on the phantoms of 
superstition. "As soon as I get money," 
said Erasmus, when he was penniless and 
in rags, "I will buy first Greek books and 
then clothes. ' ' The spirit which spoke in 



World's History. 67 

this utterance ploughed the domain of 
scholarship for the seeds of the Reformation. 
The rudiments of learning as distinct 
from religious training, which are free to 
all in the present age in nearly every civi- 
lized country, were taught to the common 
people only in the burgher schools. * These 
schools were secular in origin and aim, and 
the instruction was given in municipal build- 
ings and other structures owned or occupied 
by the civic authorities. The teachers were 
generally connected with the Church, but 
the schools were not ecclesiastical, and even 
as early as the fourteenth century, there 
was, it appears, some clashing on the ques- 
tion of secular as distinguished from reli- 
gious teaching in the burgher schools, f It 
is noteworthy, and perhaps significant, 
that the first building for use solely as a 
public school — that is, the first schoolhouse 
— was built in the republican city of Berne 
in 1 48 1. These burgher schools gave the 
people that knowledge of reading and writ- 
ing necessary for intelligent study of the 
religious and political problems soon to be 



* Even the better class of citizens were not always able to 
read and write. The father of Shakespeare was an alder- 
man, but unable to write his own name, a cross remaining 
as his signature in the records of the town of Stratford-on- 
Avon. 

f As early as 1329 the citizens of Frankfort-on-the-Oden 
resisted their ecclesiastical superiors. They remained 
twenty eight years without masses, baptisms, marriage or 
funeral rites.— Merle U ' Aiibigne. 



68 Turning Points in the 

submitted to the thought and conscience of 
educated mankind. 

Outside the cities the clergy had com- 
plete charge of education. The parish 
schools were drill-rooms of the church. 
The priests and monks taught the peasantry 
just enough to enable them to attend to 
their religious duties, and not enough to 
arouse a spirit of doubt and inquiry; and 
the simple country folk thought themselves 
bound to accept with unquestioning faith 
whatsoever they were told by their religious 
monitors. Neither in religion nor politics 
had the common people — according to the 
prevalent belief of that age — any right to 
independent preference, and it is interesting 
to note that this view was accepted as a 
matter of course by Protestants as well as 
Catholics.* 

The State and Church were closely con- 
nected, and it was sometimes difficult to 
tell whether Rome or the secular head of 
the State had the stronger claim to alle- 
giance. This temporal power was a cause 
of weakness as well as strength to the 
Church. The princes of northern and 
western Kurope were rarely so wrapped up 

* In the Diet of Augsburg in 1555, which secured for a 
time the religious peace of Germany, it was provided that 
every prince should be allowed to choose between the 
Catholic religion and the "Augsburg Confession," and the 
belief thus adopted by the prince was to be that of his 
people. It was not until the seventeenth century that 
religious toleration was more than a transient dream. 



World's History. 69 

in religion as not to be jealous of the en- 
croachments of Rome, and one of the most 
potent impulses of the Reformation was the 
desire of secular rulers to be sovereigns in 
fact as well as in name. Indeed, but for 
this feeling on the part of sovereign princes 
in Germany, in England, in Scandinavia, 
Luther and his supporters might have 
perished like Huss and Savonarola. Self- 
interest is always a powerful prick to con- 
science, and Henry and Frederick and 
Vasa were swift to see in Luther and his 
teachings a bulwark of their sovereignty 
against the assumptions of Rome. The 
very ignorance in which the masses had 
been kept under ecclesiastical tutelage made 
it easier for the people to be molded to the 
new convictions of their secular lieges. 



The people who could read were, there- 
fore, already reading and thinking when 
Tetzel, whether innocent or guilty of the 
graver charges against him, caused wide- 
spread scandal and indignation by the sale 
of indulgences. Tetzel' s formal instructions 
from his ecclesiastical superiors did not 
permit him to go to the extremes to which 
he appears to have resorted in order to pro- 
cure money for ecclesiastical uses, but the 
popular mind could not draw any nice dis- 
tinction, and it is not strange that while 



70 Turning Points in the 

the ignorant multitude was shocked by the 
unseemly exhibition, the learned and pious 
were grievously disturbed. 

Suddenl}', while all Germany is in fer- 
ment over Tetzel and his money-box, comes 
the word that a monk at Wittenberg has 
boldly declared that salvation cannot be 
bought, that the pope cannot open for a 
price the Kingdom of Heaven ! 

Men cluster in the market place, and 
talk of the wondrous report ; they whisper 
it one to another at the gate of the church ; 
they haste with it to their friends — and 
never had news traveled so rapidly from 
hamlet to hamlet, from city to city, from 
court to court, throughout Christendom. 
A monk cried ''Halt!" to the pope — a "con- 
temptible monk, ' ' as Cardinal Cajetan called 
him, had placed himself in opposition to all 
the power of Rome. No wonder that the 
pope himself did not at first perceive the 
meaning of the theses of Wittenberg, and 
Leo advised that Luther should not be 
molested. The posting of the theses of 
Wittenberg was the greatest turning point 
in modern history ; it was a declaration of 
religious independence for Teutonic nations 
at least, and it was largely instrumental in 
effecting a reformation in the Roman 
Church itself. 



World" s History . 71 

Luther himself had no idea of the scope 
and meaning of his Wittenberg declaration. 

It was a custom of the universities, as 
Professor George Burton Adams points out, 
for a teacher who had views which he wished 
to publish and uphold, to post up a state- 
ment of his views as a declaration that he 
was prepared to defend them against all 
comers. Luther's honest soul was aroused 
in common with many others by the ex- 
cesses of Tetzel, and in declaring his mind 
on indulgences and the abuses connected 
with them, he had no thought of the tre- 
mendous consequences to flow from his act. 
He probably expected some ecclesiastical 
champion of Tetzel and his methods to step 
forward and have a discussion with him, 
and that there the matter would end, so far 
as he was concerned. 

But the people were ready for just such 
an awakening. Clear and Christlike as the 
preaching of Paul, sounded Luther's asser- 
tion that ' ' Remission of sins and eternal 
life are not to be purchased by money. ' ' 
It was a challenge that Rome could not 
ignore, however secure the Roman pontiff 
may have felt himself in his acknowledged 
supremacy over the Christian world. It 
was a challenge echoed from heart to heart 
from tongue to tongue throughout Germany 
and France and Italy, England and Scot- 
land, and distant Scandinavia. 



72 Turning Points in the 

Luther, astounded at the effect of his 
theses, could not have withdrawn from the 
conflict, even had he so willed. He was 
hurried on, as he himself declared, 03' a 
force beyond his control, and was soon at 
open war with the Church within whose 
pale he found it impossible to remain. 
The theses were followed not long after by 
Luther's address to the " Christian nobles 
of Germany," and his treatise on "The 
Babylonish Captivity of the Church," 
which contained, as Ranke says, "the 
kernel of the whole Reformation. " Then 
came the papal bull, and then began the 
great struggle which, in one form or 
another lasted, with intervals of unquiet 
peace, until the present century, and the 
echo of which has been heard in Germany 
even in our own generation in the conflict 
between Bismarck and the Roman hier- 
archy. 



At first it was a question whether Protes- 
tantism could survive the hostility of the 
powerful emperor, Charles V. , of Germany 
and Spain. Charles was a most devoted 
adherent of the Church, and he employed 
the strength and resources of his empire in 
endeavoring to crush the Reformers. The 
latter banded together for self-defence. 
The League of Schmalkald included nine 



World's History. 73 

Protestant princes and twelve imperial 
cities, and was subsequently joined by five 
other princes and ten imperial cities. The 
elector of Saxony and the landgrave of 
Hesse were appointed to manage its affairs. 
The object of the alliance, which included 
northern Germany, Denmark, Saxony and 
Wurtemberg, and portions of Bavaria and 
Switzerland, was the common defence of 
the Protestant States against imperial ag- 
gression and oppression. Luther himself 
drew up two "Articles of Schmalkald, " 
setting forth the religious principles and 
claims of the League. 

The Protestants were not as successful in 
the field as they ought to have been, in 
view of the energies and resources at their 
command, and had they been alone in deal- 
ing with the emperor, he would probably 
have subdued them. Fortunately, how- 
ever, for the cause of religious liberty and 
progress, the attacks upon Charles by Kiri£ 
Francis I. , of France — himself, however, a 
most cruel and narrow-minded persecutor — 
and Solyman, the Magnificent, of Turkey, 
greatly aided the German Protestants in 
resisting the power of the emperor. It is 
an interesting fact that even the pope of 
Rome was for a time arrayed with the 
enemies of the prince, who professed to be 
the zealous champion of the Church, the 
supreme pontiff apparently regarding the 



74 Turning Points in the 

temporal schemes of Charles as more men- 
acing to papal aggrandizement than the 
efforts of the Reformers. While Charles 
was no doubt a sincere Catholic, he showed 
that streak of hypocrisy which seems insep- 
arable from bigotry in his character, by 
keeping the pope a prisoner, made such b}* 
his own express orders, while at the same 
time causing prayers to be offered up for 
the pontiff's liberation. Notwithstanding 
the disastrous defeat of the League forces 
at Muhlberg, the emperor, pressed more 
than ever by external enemies, was at length 
obliged to concede the demands of his Pro- 
testant subjects, and to acknowledge their 
right to the free exercise of their religion 
within the States governed by the Re- 
formers. 



In England, also, the revolt against the 
Roman creed and supremacy received pow- 
erful impulse from causes not directly asso- 
ciated with questions of conscience or 
dogma. In England, for the first time in 
centuries, the king was an absolute mon- 
arch. The nobility had been almost extir- 
pated in the Wars of the Roses, and those 
that remained were too weak to defy the 
crown, and in many cases too impoverished 
to be independent of the royal bounty. 
Under Henry VI. , Sir John Fortescue had 



World's History. 75 

declared that "a king of England cannot 
at his pleasure make any alteration in the 
laws of the land He is ap- 
pointed to protect his subjects in their lives, 
properties and laws ; for this very end and 
purpose he has the delegation of power 
from the people, and he has no just claim 
to any other power but this. ' ' A similar 
assertion under Henry VIII. would have 
brought the person uttering it to the block. 

The parliament was a parliament only in 
name, and merely registered the wishes of 
the king. Indeed parliament was useful to 
the monarch, without being in any sense a 
restraint upon him, for while it fulfilled his 
dictates with Oriental subserviency, it re- 
lieved him of the odium of putting his more 
odious caprices into the form of law. The 
Tudor kings were czars, without a czar's 
responsibility. 

It was to the most absolute of English 
monarchs, Henry VIII., that the desire 
came to divorce his Spanish wife, Katha- 
rine, and to wed an English lady of good 
family, Anne Boleyn. The marriage of 
Henry and Katharine had been a contract 
of policy, not of love. The couple probably 
never cared much for each other, although 
Katharine was a true wife. Her stately 
virtue and chilling dignity alienated a hus- 
band whose affections, as history shows, 
were too readily inclined to stray, and he 



76 Turning Points in the 

sought in more pleasing companionship the 
happiness which the Spanish princess 
seemed unable to bestow. Henry's great 
minister, Cardinal Wolsey, earnestly sup- 
ported the king's application to Rome for a 
divorce, with the hope and expectation that 
Henry would marry a daughter of France. 
When the cardinal learned that the object 
of Henry's passion was a young woman, 
not of princely parentage, and whose friends 
were inclined to the opinions proclaimed at 
Wittenberg, and already planted in Eng- 
land, he became lukewarm, and sought to 
delay and obstruct the divorce proceedings. * 
Even had Wolsey stood sincerely by his 
sovereign and Anne Boleyn, it is not prob- 
able that Pope Clement would have granted 
a divorce and thereby have deeply offended 
the sovereign of German} 7 and Spain, to 
whose family Katharine belonged. It was 
one thing for the pope to oppose the terri- 
torial designs of the Emperor Charles; it 
would have been quite another and far more 
serious matter to have branded a daughter 
of Aragon as having been unlawfully 
wedded to the English king, and her child 
as not entitled to her father's crown. 



*The movement originated by Wyeliffe, the greatest of 
the "Reformers before the Reformation," may be said to 
have been extinguished lone: before the dispute between 
Henry VIII. and the pope. Nevertheless the spirit which 
gave Wyeliffe the support for a time of king and nation 
against the pretensions of Rome never was extinguished in 
England. It existed before Wyeliffe and it survived him. 



World's History. 77 

The abolition of papal authority in Eng- 
land was the direct result of the pope's re- 
fusal to declare the marriage to Katharine 
invalid, and from the hour of that declara- 
tion Bngland was lost to Rome. England 
did not become a Protestant country at 
once ; under Henry it remained virtually 
Catholic, save as to papal supremacy. It 
took many years for the Protestant faith to 
become established as the creed of the peo- 
ple as well as the law of the land. The 
nation marched steadily forward, however, 
in the path of the Reformation, and even 
the'reign of Mary, Katharine's daughter, 
was hardly a pause in its progress. 

******* 

In Scotland reformation sprang from the 
people, and was the fruit of deep and earnest 
religious convictions. The Church and 
crown were at first united in striving to ex- 
tinguish the flame of revived Christianity, 
but the efforts of both were vain against a 
preacher like Knox, sustained by a power- 
ful element in the nobility, and the large 
majority of the lower classes. Scotland 
became a bulwark of the new religion in its 
more radical form, and was the scene for 
many years of unhappy strife between the 
supporters of Episcopacy and the adherents 
of that confession of faith to which James 
VI. subscribed in his youth. 



78 Turning Points in the 

Perhaps the most astonishing work of the 
Reformation was its effect upon the people 
of the Netherlands. Cautious, peace-loving 
and commercial, the men and women of the 
provinces, afterward known as the Dutch 
Republic, would hardly have been suspected 
of the heroic qualities which they displayed 
in their struggle with Spain. Only the most 
exalted motives could have evoked that 
wondrous spirit of patriotism and religious 
enthusiasm which made the Netherlands 
an arena of one of the greatest conflicts of 
modern times, which defied torture at the 
stake and death on the battlefield, and 
halted the hordes of Alva at the western 
gate of Germany. A new nation sprang 
into being, destined to take no unimpor- 
tant part in planting in the newly discov- 
ered world the principles of human progress 
and liberty, and counteracting in the con- 
tinent which Spain had discovered the ex- 
tension of Spanish bigotry and misrule. 
The story of the Dutch Republic is a chap- 
ter of the Reformation, and could never 
have been written but for the Reformation. 
The torch of liberty in the Netherlands was 
lighted in the flame of Wittenberg. 



The same year in which Luther published 
his address "to the Christian nobles of Ger- 
many, ' ' witnessed the ' ' blood-bath of Stock- 



World's History. 79 

holm. ' ' The story is worth telling, for it 
had a momentous influence on the religious 
destinies of Europe. Christian II., of Den- 
mark, was crowned king of Sweden in the 
church of St. Nikolaus, at Stockholm, late 
in the autumn of 1520. For three days the 
feasting and rejoicing went on. The king 
was in especial good humor, and kissed and 
embraced many of the guests. On the 
fourth day, when the festivities were at 
their height, many of the first nobles of the 
kingdom, together with the chief burghers 
of Stockholm and some of the most distin- 
guished prelates of the Church, were sud- 
denly summoned into the great hall of the 
palace. Here, to their utter astonishment, 
a charge of heresy was raised against them, 
and on this flimsy pretext the nobles and 
burghers were thrown into the dungeons 
of the tower, and the clergy imprisoned in 
a room by themselves. 

At noon of the following day the gates of 
the palace were thrown open, and there 
inarched forth a sorrowful procession — the 
best men of Sweden, surrounded by soldiers 
and executioners. First came the bishops, 
Vincentius and Matthias, clad in ceremonial 
robes of the Church; next, senators, in 
their regalia of office, followed by the 
mayors and council and chief citizens of 
Stockholm. They were conducted to the 
great market-place hard by. Here the 



80 Turning Points in the 

soldiers formed a hollow square around the 
doomed men. Then a Danish councilor 
called upon the populace not to be alarmed 
at what was about to take place, since these 
prisoners had sinned against the Church. 
At this Bishop Vincentius raised his voice 
and cried out, " This is not true. I demand 
a legal trial. The king is traitor to the 
Swedes and God will punish him. ' ' 

About six hundred of the best men of 
Sweden perished before the ' ' bath of blood' ' 
came to an end. Even children were not 
spared. Two little boys, eight and six 
years of age, were beheaded, with their 
father, at Jonkoping. The elder son was 
first decapitated. When the younger saw 
the flowing blood dye his brother's clothes, 
he said to the headsman, "Dear man, don't 
let my shirt get all bloody like brother's, 
for mother will whip me if you do." This 
childish prattle touched the heart of even 
the grim headsman. Flinging away his 
sword, he cried, "Sooner shall my own 
shirt be stained with blood than I make 
bloody yours, my boy." The barbarous 
king beckoned to a more hardened butcher, 
who first cut off the head of the lad, and 
then that of the executioner, who had 
shown merc3 T . 

This "blood-bath" led to the rising 
under Gustavus Vasa against Danish op- 
pression. "The fate of Sweden, aye, the 



World's History. 81 

outcome of the Thirty Years' War, the fate 
of Europe, the salvation of the Protestant 
faith, all hung upon the decision of that 
fair-haired, full-bearded young Swede, as he 
stood leaning on his staff on that winter's 
day amid the snow in the northern forest" 
— listening to the prayer of the Dalkarlar 
to return and lead them against the Danes.* 
Gustavus Vasa was, from the first, inclined 
toward the Reformation, and ultimately 
succeeded in making L,utheranism the na- 
tional religion of Sweden. Gustavus 
Adolphus, grandson of the founder of the 
House of Vasa, undoubtedly saved Protes- 
tantism from being extinguished in Ger- 
many by the mercenaries of Austria and 
the Catholic L,eague. 



The Reformers did not overthrow the 
ancient creed in France ; but they gave to 
that nation the heroic epoch of its history, 
an epoch thrilling with self-sacrifice, 
with martyrdom, with battle scenes more 
brilliant than any that chivalry had pre- 
sented, and with piety and purity of motive 
deeper than chivalry had ever known. 
The Reformation, had it succeeded, would 
doubtless have prevented the French Revo- 
lution. Defeated and overcome as it was, 
it deferred the Revolution by giving a 

*" Sweden and the Swedes."—^. W. Thomas, Jr. 
6 



82 Turning Points in the 

health}^ tone for a time to the body politic, 
and by turning the minds of men toward 
the remedies which religion suggests for 
the evils which afflict the State. When 
Protestantism departed from France, its 
place was quickly occupied by irreligious 
philosophy and speculation, which clearly 
pointed to a great political and social con- 
vulsion as the only cure for the unspeakable 
misrule of the Bourbons. 



I have already said that the Reformation 
was progressive. It is progressing to-day. 
There has been no religious turning-point 
since Wittenberg. In some respects the 
Protestantism of the sixteenth century was 
not different from Rome. The early re- 
formers were opposed to Rome because they 
believed Rome to be wrong, and in defend- 
ing their own belief, they were just as in- 
tolerant as Rome of any difference from the 
creed they professed. The}' persecuted 
Catholics and they persecuted each other. 
It was more than a century before the prin- 
ciple of religious toleration found lodgment 
in the minds of men, and it was more than 
two hundred years from Wittenberg before 
the dissenter from the recognized creed, 
either in Protestant or Catholic countries, 
ceased to be regarded and generally treated 
as a foe within the political household. 



World's History. 83 

And yet toleration was the inevitable and 
logical outcome of Luther's revolt against 
Rome. The right of individual judgment 
implied tolerance for those who conscien- 
tiously arrived at a certain belief, provided 
they were loyal and obedient to the civil 
law. If Protestants were a long time in 
coming to this conclusion, and in some 
countries have not quite arrived at it yet, 
it should be remembered that political cir- 
cumstances narrowed the horizon of con- 
science, that Europe was for centuries the 
scene of sanguinary religious strife, and 
that it was only too true in those perilous 
times that a religious antagonist was a 
public enemy. To this rule the history of 
Great Britain presented noble exceptions, 
but in Germany, swept and swept again by 
religious wars during the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries, and desolated by 
armies destroying each other in the name 
of Him who came to bring peace and good- 
will to men, a difference in creed long meant 
a difference in allegiance. 




84 Turning Points in the 

IX.— TRIAL OF THE SEVEN 
BISHOPS. 

"It is indeed," says Buckle, "difficult to 
conceive the full amount of the impetus 
given to English civilization by the expul- 
sion of the House of Stuart. Among the most 
immediate results, may be mentioned the 
limits that were set to the royal prerogative ; 
the important steps that were taken toward 
religious toleration; the remarkable and 
permanent improvement in the administra- 
tion of justice; the final abolition of a cen- 
sorship over the press; and, what has not 
excited sufficient attention, the rapid 
growth of those great monetary interests by 
which, as we shall hereafter see, the pre- 
judices of the superstitious classes have in 
no small degree been counterbalanced. 
These are the main characteristics of the 
reign of William III. ; a reign often 
aspersed, and little understood, but of 
which it may be truly said, that, taking its 
difficulties into due consideration, it is the 
most successful and the most splendid re- 
corded in the history of any country. ' ' 

The Declaration by both Houses of the 
English Parliament, when the crown was 
offered to William and Mary, clearly set 
forth the reasons for which James the Second 
was dethroned. "Whereas," it was de- 



World's History. 85 

clared, "the late king, James the Second, 
by the assistance of divers evil counsellors, 
judges, and ministers, employed by him, 
did endeavor to subvert and extirpate the 
Protestant religion, and the laws and liber- 
ties of this kingdom; by assuming and ex- 
ercising a power of dispensing with and 
suspending of laws, and the execution of 
laws, without consent of Parliament; by 
committing and prosecuting divers worthy 
prelates, for humbly petitioning to be ex- 
cused from concurring to the said assumed 
power; by issuing and causing to be exe- 
cuted, a commission, under the great seal, 
for erecting a court called 'The Court of 
Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes;' 
by levying money for and to the use of the 
crown, by pretence of prerogative, for other 
time and in other manner than the same 
was granted by Parliament; by raising and 
keeping a standing army within the king- 
dom, in time of peace, without consent of 
Parliament, and quartering soldiers con- 
trary to law; by causing several good 
subjects, being Protestants, to be disarmed, 
at the same time when papists were both 
armed and employed contrary to law ; by 
violating of members to serve in Parlia- 
ment; by prosecutions in the Court of 
King's Bench for matters and causes cog- 
nizable only in Parliament, and by divers 
other arbitrary and illegal causes; And 



86 Turning Points in the 

whereas, of late years, partial, corrupt, and 
unqualified persons have been returned, and 
served on juries, and particularly divers 
jurors in trials for high treason, which 
were not freeholders; and excessive bail 
hath been required of persons committed in 
criminal cases, to elude the benefit of the 
laws made for the liberty of the subjects; 
and excessive fines have been imposed ; and 
illegal and cruel punishments inflicted ; and 
several grants and promises made of fines 
and forfeitures, before any conviction or 
judgment against the persons upon whom 
the same were to be levied; all which are 
utterly and directly contrary to the known 
laws, and statutes, and freedom of this 
realm." 

This Declaration, or "Bill of Rights," 
as it is commonly known, is the "greater 
charter" of the English people, the original 
charter also of American liberty. It 
affirmed the freedom of debate in parlia- 
ment, the freedom of elections and the free- 
dom of petition. It assured the subjects of 
the British crown against the usurpation of 
absolute power by royalty, and it made the 
throne of England a constitutional mon- 
archy. 

The Revolution of 1688 was not less de- 
cisive in its influence on the destinies of 
America. James II. had overturned pop- 
ular government in the colonies, and at- 



World's History. 87 

tempted to establish a despotic vice-royalty 
in its place. With the mother country ac- 
quiescent in his tyrannical rule, the feeble 
settlements in America would have been 
helpless. The deliverance of England was 
the deliverance of all who owed allegiance 
to the English crown. It was the end of 
divine right as a title to the throne ; it was 
the knell of the British Bourbons who had 
worn so unw r orthily the mantle of Bruce and 
of Edward. 

It seems incredible that even a Stuart 
should have thought of rolling back the car 
of progress for over a century, restoring 
the papal connection, and reviving the 
arbitrary methods of government for which 
James the Second's father lost his head. 
James ascended the throne under the most 
favorable auspices for a successful and happy 
reign — barring his own determination to 
abuse the power intrusted to him. The 
attempt to exclude him from the succession 
had failed, and the conservative sentiment 
of the country was friendly to the new king. 
"The magistrates of Middlesex," says 
Macaulay, "thanked God for having con- 
founded the designs of those regicides and 
excluders who, not content with having 
murdered one blessed monarch, were bent 
on destroying the foundations of monarchy. 
The city of Gloucester execrated the blood- 
thirsty villains who had tried to deprive 



88 Turning Points in the 

his majesty of his just inheritance. The 
burgesses of Wigan assured their sovereign 
that they would defend him against all 
plotting Ahithophels and rebellious Ab- 
saloms. The grand jury of Suffolk ex- 
pressed a hope that the parliament would 
proscribe all the excluders. Many corpo- 
rations pledged themselves never to return 
to parliament any person who had voted 
for taking away the birthright of James. 
Even the capital was profoundly obsequious. 
The lawyers and traders vied with each 
other in servility. Inns of court and inns 
of chancery sent up fervent professions of 
attachment and submission. All the great 
commercial societies, the East India Com- 
pany, the African Compan}', the Turkey 
Company, the Muscovia Company, the Hud- 
son's Ba}' Company, the Maryland Mer- 
chants, the Jamaica Merchants, the Merchant 
Adventurers, declared that they most cheer- 
fully complied with the royal edict which 
required them still to pay custom. Bristol, 
the second city of the island, echoed the 
voice of London. But nowhere was the 
spirit of loyalty stronger than in the two 
universities. Oxford declared that she 
would never swerve from those religious 
principles which bound her to obey the 
king without any restrictions or limitations. 
Cambridge condemned, in severe terms, the 
violence and treachery of those turbulent 



World's History. 89 

men who had maliciously endeavored to turn 
the stream of succession out of the ancient 
channel. ' ' 

James proceeded to show his appreciation 
of all this confidence by forthwith plotting 
to secure absolutism for himself and to an- 
tagonize the religious faith of the vast 
majority of Englishmen. His misrule pro- 
voked the rebellion headed by the Duke of 
Monmouth, the natural sou of Charles the 
Second, and nephew of James. The rising 
was poorly planned and easily defeated. It 
gave James an opportunity which he eagerly 
seized to suppress constitutional agitation 
and freedom of speech under the cover of 
punishing treason.* 



*"It has not been generally thought that," says Ma- 
eaulay, " either after the rebellion of 1715, or after the rebel- 
lion of 1745, the House of Hanover erred on the side of 
clemency; yet all the executions of 1715 and 1745 added 
together will appear to have been few indeed when com- 
pared with those which disgraced the Bloody Assizes. The 
number of the rebels whom Jeffreys hanged on this circuit 
was 320. Iyonsdale says 700, and Burnet 600." In Somerset- 
shire, "the chief seat of the rebellion, 233 prisoners were in a 
few days hanged, drawn and quartered. At every spot 
where two roads met, on every market-place, on the green 
of every village which had furnished Monmouth with sol- 
diers, ironed corpses clattering in the wind, or heads and 
quarters stuck on poles, poisoned the air, and made the 
traveler sick with horror. In many parishes the peasantry 
could not assemble in the house of God without seeing 
the ghastly face of a neighbor grinning at them over the 
porch. The Chief Justice was all himself. His spirits rose 
higher and higher as the work went on. He laughed, 
shouted, joked and swore in such a way that many thought 
him drunk from morning to night; but in him it was not 
easy to distinguish the madness produced by evil passions 
from the madness produced by brandy." 



90 Turning Points i?i the 

The terror inspired by the "Bloody As- 
sizes' ' encouraged James to step still farther 
toward the precipice, and he now began 
plotting to break down the English church, 
with the eventual object of a reconciliation 
with Rome. He pretended to favor free- 
dom of religious worship, while taking a 
course which, if successful, would have re- 
sulted in the enslavement of the English 
people, and the extension to England of the 
religious conditions which prevailed in 
France and Spain and Italy. The clergy 
resolutely resisted the royal decrees, and 
the climax was reached in the imprisonment 
in the Tower of the seven bishops who ven- 
tured upon a respectful remonstrance against 
the action of the king. 

James had ordered that his declaration 
of indulgence should be read by the clergy 
in the churches immediately after divine 
service. A meeting of bishops was held at 
Lambeth Palace, and it was resolved to pe- 
tition the king to recall the order. The 
words of the petition were, "that the great 
averseness found in themselves to their dis- 
tributing and publishing, in all their 
churches, your majesty's late declaration 
for liberty of conscience, proceeds neither 
from any want of duty nor obedience to 
your majesty ; our holy mother, the Church 
of England, being, both in her principles 
and her constant practice, unquestionably 



World's History. 91 

loyal, and having, to her great honor, been 
more than once publicly acknowledged to 
be so by your gracious majesty; nor yet 
from any want of tenderness to dissenters, 
in relation to whom we are willing to come 
to such a temper as shall be thought fit, 
when the matter shall be considered and 
settled in Parliament and Convocation ; but 
among other considerations, from this es- 
pecially, because that declaration is founded 
upon such a dispensing power as hath been 
often declared illegal in Parliament, and 
particularly in the years 1662 and 1672, and 
in the beginning of your majesty's reign; 
and is a matter of so great moment and 
consequence to the whole nation, both in 
Church and State, that your petitioners 
cannot, in common prudence, honor, or 
conscience, so far make themselves parties 
to it, as the distribution of it all over the 
nation, and the solemn publication of it once 
and again, even in God's house, and in the 
time of divine service, must amount to in 
common and reasonable construction. ' ' 

King James was deeply offended, and the 
bishops were arrested and committed to the 
Tower on the charge of having contrived, 
written and published a seditious libel. 
The excitement was intense, and the trial 
was watched as no State trial had been 
watched before. A deafening huzza from 
the audience welcomed the jury's verdict 



92 Turning Points in the 

of acquittal, and that shout was echoed from 
town to town, from hamlet to hamlet 
throughout the land. From that day the 
Stuart dynasty was doomed. 

All eyes were now turned to William, 
Prince of Orange, the husband of Mary, the 
Protestant daughter of King James. Wil- 
liam was one of the ablest generals and 
statesmen of his time, and he promptly 
proceeded to collect men and arms for an 
expedition against his father-in-law. He 
also published a declaration in favor of 
popular rights and condemning the arbi- 
trary government of James. The land- 
ing of William at Torbay, the flight 
of James, and the elevation of William 
and Mary to the throne need not be 
described here. The great turning 
point in English, and I may add also in 
American, history, was the trial of the seven 
bishops, which aroused the English people 
from the stupor of despotism, and laid fast 
and sure the foundation of popular sov- 
ereignty. 



Jfr 



World's History. 93 

X.— HUTCHINSON'S WRITS OF 
ASSISTANCE. 

"Governor Hutchinson is dead. * * * 
He was born to be the cause and victim of 
popular fury, outrage and conflagrations. 
Descended from an ancient and honorable 
family; born and educated in America; 
professing all the zeal of the Congrega- 
tional religion; affecting to honor the char- 
acters of the first planters of the New 
World, and to vindicate the character of 
America and especially of New England; 
early initiated into public business; in- 
dustrious and indefatigable in it; beloved 
and esteemed by the people; elected and 
trusted by them and their representatives; 
his views opened and extended by repeated 
travels in Europe; engaged in extensive 
correspondence in Europe as well as in 
America ; favored with the crown of Great 
Britain, and possessed of its honors and 
emoluments — possessed of all these advan- 
tages and surrounded by all these circum- 
stances, he was perhaps the only man in 
the world who could have brought on the 
controversy between Great Britain and 
America in the manner and at the time it 
was done, and involved the two countries 
in an enmity which must end in their ever- 
lasting separation. Yet this was the char- 



94 Turning Points i?i the 

acter of the man, and these his memorable 
actions. An inextinguishable ambition 
and avarice, that were ever seen among his 
other qualities, and which grew with his 
growth, and strengthened with his age and 
experience, and at last predominated over 
every other passion of his heart and prin- 
ciple of his mind, rendered him credulous 
to a childish degree of everything that 
favored his ruling passion, and blind and 
deaf to everything that thwarted it to such 
a degree that his representations with those 
of his fellow-laborer, Bernard, drew on the 
king, ministry, parliament and nation to 
concert measures which will end in their 
reduction, and the exaltation of America. " 

Such is the description by John Adams, 
in a letter to the President of the Congress, 
June 17, 1780, of the man who, as Chief 
Justice of Massachusetts, was instrumental 
in the measures which aroused the colonists 
to the necessity of defending their liberties, 
and of opposing a united front to British 
injustice and oppression. 

When the colonists, their western bounds 
no longer threatened by civilized foes, their 
plantations flourishing and their seaport 
towns wealthy with the profits of a com- 
merce carried on in contempt of imperial 
restrictions, began to feel and to assert that 
they were entitled to all the rights of free- 
born Englishmen, and to the same commer- 



World's History. 95 

cial and industrial independence enjoyed by 
loyal subjects in England, they were sur- 
prised to learn that parliament and the 
English people regarded them not as free- 
men, but as tributaries. The colonists were 
themselves loyal, even up to the hour when 
they were compelled by stubborn tyranny 
to assert the right of revolution, for, to quote 
the language of John Adams, ''it is true 
there always existed in the colonies a de- 
sire of independence of Parliament in the 
articles of internal taxation and internal 
policy, and a very general, if not universal 
opinion, that they were constitutionally en- 
titled to it, and as general a determination 
to maintain and defend it. But there never 
existed a desire of independence of the 
Crown, or of general regulations of com- 
merce for the equal and impartial benefit of 
all parts of the empire." "If any man," 
said the same great statesman, "wishes to 
investigate thoroughly the causes, feelings 
and principles of the Revolution, he must 
study this Act of Navigation, and the Acts 
of Trade, as a philosopher, a politician and 
a philanthropist. ' ' 

When the Act of Navigation was origi- 
nally passed, in the Cromwell period, it is 
probable that the colonies were not seriously 
in the minds of the people and of parlia- 
ment. The act was aimed by English trading 
interests, at the Dutch, and was effective 



96 Turning Points in the 

for the purposes intended ; but within the 
decade that elapsed before its re-enactment 
under the Restoration, the colonial trade 
had grown with a vigor that aroused jeal- 
ousy and uneasiness at home, and the Act 
of Navigation was soon followed, in 1663, 
by the first of the Acts of Trade, which 
provided that no supplies should be im- 
ported into any colony, except what had 
been actually shipped in an English port, 
and carried directly thence to the import- 
ing colony. This cut the colonies off 
from direct trade with any foreign coun- 
try, and made England the depot for all 
necessaries or luxuries which the colo- 
nies desired, and which they could not 
obtain in America. Nine years later, 
in 1672, followed another act ''for the 
better securing the plantation trade," 
which recited that the colonists had, 
contrary to the express letter of the 
aforesaid laws, brought into diverse parts 
of Europe great quantities of their growth, 
productions and manufactures, sugar, to- 
bacco, cotton, wool and dye woods being 
particularly enumerated in the list, and that 
the trade and navigation in those commo- 
dities from one plantation to another had 
been greatly increased, and provided that 
all colonial commodities should either be 
shipped to England or Wales before being 
imported into another colony, or that a 



World's History. 97 

customs duty should be paid on such com- 
modities equivalent to the cost of conveying 
the same to England, and thence to the 
colony for which they were destined. For 
instance, if a merchant in Rhode Island de- 
sired to sell some product of the colony of 
Massachusetts in New York, and to forward 
the same by vessel, either a bond had to 
be given that the commodity would be trans- 
ported to England, or a duty had to be 
paid, in money or in goods, sufficiently 
onerous to protect the English merchant 
and ship-owner against serious colonial com- 
petition in the carrying trade. 

The above act was followed up by another 
providing penalties for attempted violation 
of the customs laws. In this statute no 
mention was made of the plantations, and 
its general tenor indicated that it was in- 
tended to apply to Great Britain only, pro- 
viding, as it did, for the searching of houses 
and dwellings for smuggled goods by virtue 
of a writ of assistance under the seal of His 
Majesty's court of exchequer. Under Wil- 
liam the Third, who was as arbitrary a 
monarch toward the colonies as the second 
James had been, the statute was made 
directly applicable to the plantation trade, 
with the provision that "the like assistance 
shall be given to the said officers in the ex- 
ecution of their office, as by the last-men- 
tioned act is provided for the officers in 



98 Turning Points in the 

England." It was on the question of 
whether such a writ could be issued from a 
colonial court that James Otis made the 
famous speech in which he arraigned the 
commercial policy of England, stripped the 
veil of reform from the bust of the Stadt- 
holder-King, and awakened the colonists to 
a throbbing sense of English oppression and 
of American wrongs — the oration which, in 
the language of John Adams, who heard it, 
" breathed into this nation the breath of 
life." 



It is needless to follow the numerous Acts 
of Trade in their order, for they were all in 
a line with the accepted and established 
principle of that age in England, that the 
colonies should minister to the commercial 
aggrandizement of the mother country, in- 
stead of being the centres of an independent 
traffic, that they should be communities for 
the consumption of British manufactures 
and the feeding of British trade. New 
England was especially the object of Eng- 
lish jealousy and restriction, and for reasons, 
as given by Sir Josiah Child, in his ''New 
Discourse on Trade, ' ' written about the 
year 1677, that are creditable to the founders 
of those States, or after speaking of the 
people of Virginia and the Barbadoes as a 
loose vagrant sort, "vicious and destitute 



World's History. 99 

of means to live at home, gathered up 
about the streets of London or other places, 
and who, had there been no English foreign 
plantation in the world, must have come to 
be hanged or starved, or died untimely of 
those miserable diseases that proceed from 
want and vice, or have sold themselves as 
soldiers to be knocked on the head, or at 
best, by begging or stealing two shillings 
and sixpence, have made their way to Hol- 
land to become servants to the Dutch, who 
refuse none," he goes on to describe "a 
people whose frugality, industry and tem- 
perance and the happiness of whose laws 
and institutions do promise to themselves 
long life, with a wonderful increase of peo- 
ple, riches and power." But, after paying 
this probably reluctant tribute to New 
England virtue and industry, he frankly 
avows his full sympathy with the restrictive 
system, and adds that ''there is nothing 
more prejudicial and in prospect more dan- 
gerous to any mother kingdom than the 
increase of shipping in her colonies, plan- 
tations and provinces." It is no wonder 
that John Adams said that he never read 
these authors without being set on fire, and 
that at last the same fire spread to every 
patriotic breast. 

The Acts of Navigation and of Trade were 
not the dead letters that some superficial 
writers and readers have seen fit to term 



ioo Turning Points in the 

them. It is true that obedience was reluc- 
tant and slow, and that evasion was exten- 
sive, and it is also true, that colonial com- 
merce flourished in spite of the restrictions; 
but it should be remembered that the pro- 
longed wars in which England was engaged 
gave lucrative opportunities for privateer- 
ing, and that even the customs duties, 
though intended to be virtually prohibitory, 
were not heavy enough to overcome the ad- 
vantages which the colonists enjoyed. In 
Rhode Island the General Assembly asserted 
and maintained the right to regulate the 
fees of the customs officers, and, as far as 
was possible, the collection of the dues. 
The shipping of the colony rapidly in- 
creased, and in 1731 included two vessels 
from England, as many from Holland and 
the Mediterranean, and ten or twelve from 
the West Indies, and ten years later num- 
bered one hundred and twenty vessels en- 
gaged in the West Indian, African, Euro- 
pean and coasting trade. The period 
preceding the Revolution witnessed New 
England's greatest commercial prosperity, 
and it was in that age that Moses Brown 
and other enterprising merchants and ship- 
owners laid the foundation of fortunes, a 
liberal share of which has been expended 
with illustrious munificence in monuments 
of learning, of art and of charity. As for 
the restrictions upon domestic industry 



World's History. 101 

they were not severely felt among a people 
devoted, in the country to agriculture, and 
in the towns to local traffic and shipping, 
and the American farmer who wore home- 
spun attire, did not realize the harshness or 
appreciate the purpose of the statute which 
prohibited the export of wool or woolen 
manufactures. As for the Southern planter, 
the question of fostering domestic manufac- 
tures never entered his thoughts. He 
raised his tobacco and his cotton, exported 
them to England, and got what goods he 
needed there just as his descendants, in a 
later age, procured the manufactured ne- 
cessities and luxuries of life from the depots 
of New England trade.* 

But even if the British Parliament had 
never attempted to raise a revenue by taxa- 
tion in the American colonies, it is prob- 
able that in time the restrictions on com- 
merce would have led to revolution, unless 
rescinded. This was the opinion of the 
shrewd observer Du Chatelet, who, after 
France had surrendered her American pos- 
sessions to Great Britain, said that "they 
(the chambers of commerce) regard every- 
thing in colonial commerce which does not 
turn exclusively to the benefit of the king- 
dom as contrary to the end for which colo- 
nies were established, and as a theft from 

* ' ' English Free Trade ; Its Foundation, Growth and 
Decline." By Henry Mann 



102 Turning Points in the 

the State. To practice on these maxims is 
impossible. The wants of trade are stronger 
than the laws of trade. The north of 
America can alone furnish supplies to its 
south. This is the only point of view under 
which the cession of Canada can be regarded 
as a loss for France ; but that cession will 
one day be amply compensated, if it shall 
cause in the English colonies the rebellion 
and the independence which become every 
day more probable and more near. ' ' 



America, if not contented, was quiet un- 
der restrictive laws not stringently enforced, 
and but for the measures initiated by Gren- 
ville and Townshend, and approved by the 
king, the parliament and the people of 
England, there would, if the leading Amer- 
ican minds of that day were sincere, have 
been no insurrection in that era against 
British authority. George the Third is 
called a tyrant on every recurring Fourth 
of July, but the nation he ruled was as 
tyrannical as he, and impartial history 
cannot condemn the monarch without 
awarding a greater share of odium to his 
people, who sustained by their pronounced 
opinion and through their chosen represen- 
tatives, every measure for the destruction 
of the liberties of these colonies, and who 
began to listen to the dictates of reason and 



World's History. 103 

of humanity only when America had become 
the prison of thousands of England's sol- 
diers, and thousands of others, hired Hes- 
sian and kidnaped Briton alike, had been 
welcomed by American freemen to graves 
in American soil. The measures which 
led to war, and the war itself, were inspired 
and incited by the trading classes, as well 
as the aristocracy of England, who expected, 
in the destruction of a powerful commer- 
cial and menacing industrial rival, an ample 
return for the blood and treasure expended 
in the strife. The American people recog- 
nized that the struggle was for commercial 
and industrial as well as for political inde- 
pendence, and the stand in behalf of Amer- 
ican industry was taken long before the 
scattered colonies met an empire in the field 
of arms. 

Even before peace had been made with 
France the king's officers in America began 
to enforce the revenue laws with a rigor to 
which the colonists had been unaccustomed. 
Charles Paxton, commissioner of customs 
in Boston, applied to the Superior Court for 
authority to use writs of assistance in 
searching for smuggled goods. These 
writs were warrants for the officers to search 
when and where they pleased and to call 
upon others to assist them, instead of pro- 
curing a special search warrant for some 
designated place. Thomas Hutchinson, 



104 Turning Points in the 

chief justice, and afterward royalist gover- 
nor and refugee, favored the application, 
which was earnestly opposed by the mer- 
chants and the people generally. ' ' To my 
dying day," exclaimed James Otis, in 
pleading against the measure, "I will 
oppose with all the power and faculties 
God has given me, all such instru- 
ments of slavery on one hand, and of 
villain}^ on the other." Parliament had 
authorized the issue of the writs, how- 
ever, and the custom house officers there- 
fore had the law on their side. Writs 
were granted, but their enforcement was 
attended with so man}' difficulties that 
the customs authorities virtually gave 
up this attempt to encroach upon the rights 
of the people. The next step in pro- 
voking the colonists to revolution was the 
Stamp Act. The object of this enactment 
was to raise money for the support of Brit- 
ish troops and the payment of salaries to 
certain public officers in the colonies who 
had depended upon the colonial treasuries 
for their compensation. In this there was 
a threefold invasion of colonial rights. 
Taxation without representation was con- 
trary to a principle recognized for centuries 
in England, vindicated in the revolution 
which cost Charles I. his head, and upheld 
in America from the very beginning of the 
settlements here. Again, while British 



World's History. 105 

troops had been welcome as allies in bat- 
tling against the French and the Indians, 
they were not desired as garrisons to over- 
awe the free people of the colonies, and 
finally the colonial officers whom it was 
proposed to pay from the royal treasury 
would become the masters instead of ser- 
vants of the people — or they would be ser- 
vants only of the king. The purpose of the 
Stamp Act obviously was to make America 
the vassal of Great Britain. The act re- 
quired that legal documents and commer- 
cial instruments should be written, and 
that newspapers should be printed, on 
stamped paper. 



The people everywhere protested against 
the tyrannical action of Parliament. Sam- 
uel Adams drew up the instructions to the 
newly- elected representatives of Boston to 
use all efforts against the plan of parlia- 
mentary taxation. It was resolved "that 
the imposition of duties and taxes by the 
Parliament of Great Britain upon a people 
not represented in the House of Commons 
is irreconcilable with their rights. ' ' A 
committee of correspondence was appointed 
in Massachusetts to communicate with other 
colonial assemblies, and the idea of union 
for the common defence began to take firm 
hold on the public mind. Benjamin Frank- 



io6 Turning Points in the 

lin, in the Congress held at Albany in 1754 
to insure the aid of the Six Nations in the 
war then breaking out with France, had 
proposed a plan of union for the colonies, 
with a grand council having extensive 
powers and a president to be appointed by 
the crown. The plan was not adopted. 
Adams had written about the same time 
that ' ' the only way to keep us from setting 
up for ourselves is to disunite us." Every- 
body now began to perceive the need of 
union, which the great intellects of Frank- 
lin and Adams had discerned long before. 



The story of the American Revolution 
need not be told over again in these pages. 
The turning-point toward that tremendous 
struggle, with all its burden of destiny for 
mankind, was the issue of writs of assistance 
by Thomas Hutchinson, Chief Justice of 
Massachusetts. Hutchinson paid a bitter 
penalty for the wrong he had done his 
country. He did not live to see indepen- 
dence achieved, but he lived long enough 
to keenly feel the chill of royal displeasure 
and aversion, resulting from evidence which 
even King George could not disregard that 
American patriotism and endurance had 
been grossly undervalued and misrepre- 
sented by the so-called American loyalists. 

The political effects of the American 



World's History. 107 

Revolution have been almost entirely con- 
fined to the American continent. While 
the revolt of the Spanish- American colonies 
was neither inspired nor promoted from the 
United States, the newly-enfranchised na- 
tions adopted our institutions, in form at 
least. Their independence to-day of Euro- 
pean dictation and interference is largely 
due to the influence on Europe of the pres- 
ence of a great power in North America able 
to repel and rebuke European encroachment. 

But when we look toward Europe we see 
there no sign of American influence in 
national politics, no disposition to adopt or 
imitate our American system of govern- 
ment. The French Revolution had no in- 
spiration from this side of the Atlantic, and 
wherever the people of Europe have been 
admitted to a voice in public affairs, Eng- 
lish, and not American, institutions have 
been copied. America is politically isolated 
from the rest of the world. We neither 
give nor take. Europe has progressed ac- 
cording to lines of its own ; and we along 
lines that are distinct and separate from 
those of the parent continent. 

The most important political effect of the 
American Revolution, outside of our own 
boundaries, has been to make England dis- 
card her policy of selfishness in dealing with 
her colonies. Had the American War of 
Independence ended differently, Canada 



108 Turning Points in the 

and Australia would not, in all probability, 
have home rule to-day. Like Charles the 
Second, who did not care to go on his 
travels again, England has not cared to risk 
more revolutions by a policy of injustice 
and oppression. This effect of the Ameri- 
can Revolution has been a gain not only for 
England and her colonies, but for mankind. 



An effect of the American Revolution of 
vast advantage to all the world is the de- 
velopment of American genius under free 
institutions. It is a noteworthy fact that 
the great discoveries of the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries have had their birth 
in England and America, and America has 
full right to claim at least equal honors with 
the mother land. The climate of despotism 
is not favorable to the flower of genius; and 
the same may be said of a cramped colonial 
horizon. It is difficult to believe that a 
Fulton, a Morse, or an Edison would have 
grown to maturity in colonial soil, and we 
may say the same of a Watt or a Stephen- 
son. The ozone of liberty is a healthy 
stimulus to inventive talent. 

The American Revolution made it certain 
that the western hemisphere would be free 
from crowns and kings, that in North and 
South America the problem of popular self- 
government would be worked out under the 



World's History, 109 

most favorable auspices possible. Tile 
Revolution did not solve the problem; it 
is not solved yet ; more ordeals may try the 
nation's courage and grit and integrity be- 
fore it will be solved ; but there is every 
reason to hope and believe that the spirit 
which has subdued every obstacle in the 
past will not be wanting in the trials to 
come. 




no Turning Points in the 

XI.— THE GUILLOTINE VERSUS 

THE DIVINE RIGHT OF 

KINGS. 

There is one passion in the minds of 
men stronger than love of liberty — it is 
national pride. It is a passion which has 
often defeated the best designed schemes of 
rulers and statesmen, which has sometimes 
retarded the progress of mankind, and 
maintained nationality at the cost of many 
advantages. It is not a passion to be de- 
spised or. condemned, for it is patriotism 
in its crude, untempered form, and history 
is red-lettered with the deeds of heroism, 
loyalty and self-sacrifice springing from 
that spirit which preferred national identity 
with all its drawbacks to civilization and 
progress as gifts from an alien hand. The 
Edwardian conquest was a distinct benefit 
to Scotland, yet that fact does not diminish 
our admiration of Wallace and of Bruce. 
The majority of the Poles probably lost 
nothing, and many of them came under 
better conditions by the partition of Poland, 
yet Poland's brave and hopeless struggle 
for the restoration of a nationality whose 
government was in all respects the worst in 
Europe, evokes our deepest sympathy. 

It was mainly this spirit which defeated 
the French Revolution and its offspring, the 



World's History. 1 1 1 

First Empire, in their attempts to extend 
liberal institutions to other countries of 
Europe. And yet the French Revolution 
was a memorable turning-point in history, 
and the changes which it brought about in 
the institutions of the continent could not 
be effaced by all the efforts of the Holy 
Alliance. It began as a flood, violent and 
destructive in its course, and it swept first 
over France, and then over Italy and Ger- 
many and Spain and lesser countries, carry- 
ing away the ancient landmarks so swiftly 
and fiercely that they could never be fully 
restored, and leaving a political desert, 
studded with altars of liberty, as odious as 
they seemed impious to the subject people.* 
The French revolutionists overthrew prin- 
cipalities and republics alike. There was 
nothing constructive in their policy. As 
iconoclasts, as exterminators of ancient 
regimes, whether of liberty or despotism, 
they surpassed the Goths and the Vandals. 



♦The presence and proceedings of the French in Leghorn 
were alike odious to the inhabitants, who found an im- 
portant branch of their trade — that with England — com- 
pletely cut off, and who had to satisfy unceasing demands 
for money and equipments. Large bodies of ragged, bare- 
footed troops continually entered the town, to quit it well 
shod and with new uniforms. The republican cockade 
became an abomination in the eyes of the Leghornese, who 
christened it il pasticcino — the little pie — and wrote innu- 
merable lampoons upon its wearers. Leghorn was con- 
verted into a camp, and on a large altar in the middle of the 
Piazza d'Arme, a statue of Liberty was erected, at the foot 
of which the popular representatives, Garat and Salicetti, 
daily harangued £ne troops upon parade.— Vincent Nolle' s 
"Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres." 



112 Turning Points in the 

The French nobility sank out of sight 
under the guillotine. The reaction against 
the Terror had begun before the tricolor 
had been carried far beyond the boundaries 
of France ; but while the lives of foreigners, 
not in arms against France, were spared 
under the milder regime, the substance of 
the people was consumed in requisitions and 
exactions for the support of the French 
troops, and of the cloud of officials who 
swarmed upon the conquered communities. 
From these sources were derived the for- 
tunes of French generals and other public 
men, including Napoleon himself, who 
seems to have risen from abject poverty to 
opulence with a speed as astonishing as his 
military successes. 

It may be said that the First Republic 
never had a fair opportunity to show what 
it would have done for other countries ; but 
judging from what it did for France, other 
countries are to be congratulated. It is not 
probable that Marat and Robespierre and 
their associates would have been any more 
merciful to the better classes of Rome, or 
Vienna, or Berlin, than they were to those 
of Paris, had the sans culotte armies given 
them the power to play the role of Terror- 
ists in those capitals. And while the re- 
publican successors of the Terror were more 
humane, they were likewise more corrupt 
They used their victories to levy and extort 



World' s History. 113 

ransom from States in dread of their arms, 
and mistook the American people to such a 
degree as to make a similar attempt on the 
United States, thus bringing on a naval war 
between the two nations. It may be re- 
peated, indeed, that the French Republic 
was simply and solely destructive, the sole 
and important exception to this characteri- 
zation being the abolition of the old system 
of land tenure in France, and the beginning 
of the creation of a land-owning peasantry, 
the conservative bulwark of the present 
Republic. 

WHY NAPOLEON FAIIyED. 

Napoleon was not merely a conqueror; 
he was also one of the greatest of statesmen 
and lawgivers. He made a sincere attempt 
to establish liberal institutions in the various 
countries under his rule, with the reserva- 
tion that he himself should be the absolute 
master of all. He had no trouble in obtain- 
ing for his usurpation the support of the 
middle class in France, weary of the narrow 
oligarchy that tyrannized in the name of 
liberty, and imitated the corruptions of the 
Bourbon court, without the prestige of 
aristocracy. With the Terrorists and Re- 
actionists glaring at each other, Napoleon 
rode in between and seized the prize of 
power, risking on the one hand the hate 
and vengeance of the Jacobins, and on the 

8 



114 Turning Points in the 

other the royalist fanaticism of Georges 
Cadoudal. 

It is useless to talk of what Napoleon 
might have done, had he been let alone. 
He was not let alone. Even had all the 
continent been willing to bow to his will, 
to live at peace with him, and give him 
opportunity to build up the internal inter- 
ests of his empire, England would not have 
permitted him to enjoy rest. The sympa- 
thies of the ruling classes in England were 
aristocratic. The people of England were 
still controlled by ancient prejudice against 
their neighbors across the Channel, and in 
face of the stupendous continental successes 
of the French, the ministry received almost 
unanimous support in its policy of war. 
England maintained the empire of the seas, 
but Napoleon continued to be supreme on 
land. 



The wars in which Napoleon was almost 
continually engaged might well have ex- 
cused him from the accomplishment of great 
internal reforms, but he found time, never- 
theless, to frame the Code Napoleon, and 
institute for France and for a great part of 
Europe, a system of laws which is his last- 
ing monument. He created the code known 
by his name with the assistance of the 
ablest lawyers of France, but the work was 



World's History. 1 15 

his own in the sense that it bore his stamp 
in every section, and carried into effect his 
carefully matured views of the changes 
made necessary in the law by the changed 
conditions of France. The Code Napoleon 
was to modern times what the Justinian Code 
had been to the later Roman period. It 
enfranchised the law from feudalism and 
ecclesiasticism. It garnered and preserved 
the best fruit of the Revolution, and pro- 
vided, at the same time, for that equal and 
impartial protection of the citizen and his 
property which is the best guarantee against 
revolution. So obvious were its benefits, 
that it has survived all political changes in 
France, and has continued to be the ground- 
work of legislation in States unfriendly to 
France. 

It was the expressed desire and purpose 
of Napoleon to secure in countries under 
his control the abolition of all pecuniary 
and other exemptions of the privileged 
classes, the extinction of all their vested 
rights to labor, service, tolls and charges 
on land, and the introduction of a system 
of equal local rates for all persons. To 
Jerome, his brother, king of Westphalia, he 
wrote : ' ' What the German peoples desire 
with impatience is that individuals who 
are not noble and who have talents shall 
have an equal right to your consideration 
with the nobility ; that every sort of servi- 



n6 Turning Points in the 

tude and of intermediate obligations be- 
tween the sovereign and the lowest class in 
the people should be entirely abolished. 
The benefits of the Code Napoleon, the 
publicity of legal procedure, the establish- 
ment of the jury system, will be the dis- 
tinctive characteristics of your monarchy. 
And to tell you my whole mind on this 
matter, I count more on the effect 
of these benefits for the extension and 
strengthening of your kingdom, than upon 
the result of the greatest victories. Your 
people ought to enjoy a liberty, an equality, 
a well-being unknown to the German peo- 
ples What people would wish 

to return to the arbitrary government of 
Prussia, when it has tasted the benefits of 
a wise and liberal administration? The 
peoples of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, 
desire equality, and demand that liberal 
ideas should prevail." 

Napoleon found to his cost that the peo- 
pie of Germany and Spain and the Nether- 
lands did wish to return to their old rulers, 
after they had tasted what he called "a 
wise and liberal administration," and the 
reason was that their patriotism was 
stronger than their gratitude for any bene- 
fits that Napoleon could bestow, especially 
as those benefits were made almost worthless 
by the exacting demands of a merciless con- 
scription. 



World's History. 1 1 7 

The power of Napoleon reached its zenith 
in the Treaty of Tilsit, and it was under 
the readjustment of State boundaries and 
political conditions which followed that 
the Napoleonic system was most widely 
developed. The imperial regime, after 
and in consequence of this treaty, was 
attended by the reduction of a number of 
small sovereignties to a subordinate rank, 
and by the introduction of French laws in 
the territories annexed to France, or 
brought under the rule of Napoleon's vassal 
princes. The emperor sincerely intended, 
as indicated in his correspondence, that 
these changes should benefit the people 
subjected to them. The Germans, how- 
ever, while more or less sullenly submissive 
to a master who seemed invincible, con- 
tinued to regard the French as intruders 
and oppressors. 



Two circumstances tended to defeat Na- 
poleon's aim to establish an absolute empire 
with a foundation of democracy. One of 
these circumstances was the attempt to 
buttress his throne with a new nobility, 
created by himself; the other was the de- 
mand for a continuous supply of recruits, 
made imperative by the exhaustion of his 
armies in ceaseless warfare. The princes 
and dukes to whom he awarded titles were, 



Ii8 Turning Points in the 

as a rule, not anxious for the distinctions. 
Most of them were men of high military 
rank, who preferred to be known as "Mar- 
shal" or "General," rather than as 
"Prince" this, or "Duke" that, when 
everybody knew that they were not of 
princely or ducal ancestry. Napoleon had 
to order Bernadotte to take the title of 
Prince of Ponte-Corvo before he would ac- 
cept it, and others were equally reluctant. 
The creation of a nobility did not strengthen 
the empire; but on the contrary it sapped 
the popular basis of Napoleon's power, 
without gaining for him the good-will of 
the dynasties he vainly sought to conciliate 
by absurd imitation. 

The insatiable demand for soldiers to 
meet the enemies who rose continually on 
every side of the empire, spurred on by 
British diplomacy, and subsidized with Brit- 
ish gold, was in itself a grievance mon- 
strous enough to more than offset every 
benefit associated with French supremacy. 
The departments were swept year after 
year with the besom of a remorseless con- 
scription, which spared neither the father 
of a family, nor the widow's son. "In the 
Prussian States," said a writer of that 
period, "where the military system is 
reckoned extremely severe, there are re- 
strictions which humanity claims, which 
equity prescribes, and which the interests 



World' s History . 119 

of society demand. The requisition spares, 
in behalf of the husbandman, the eldest son 
who is the support of the family ; it estab- 
lishes exceptions in favor of the masters of 
workshops and manufactories, and admits 
of exemptions to whole cities and provinces. 
According to the French law no situation, 
no condition of life exempts from appear- 
ing. The summons to the conscripts of the 
year 14, which the prefect of the depart- 
ment of the Seine published at the time in 
Paris, will furnish an idea of it. 'All the 
conscripts of the year 14,' it is there de- 
clared, 'present within the limits of the 
district, whether married men, widowers or 
bachelors, susceptible or not susceptible of 
exemptions, even those who by deformity 
or disease are evidently incapable of sup- 
porting the fatigues of war, are commanded 
to present themselves in person at the as- 
sembly herein pointed out. Persons absent, 
and those in actual confinement, must be 
represented by their parents, guardians, 
friends, or some other person delegated by 
themselves.' The French law is general 
and includes no mitigating regulation. 
The widow's only son; he whose labor is 
the sole support of a sick or aged father; 
he who by the death of father or mother 
has become the parent of a family of help- 
less brothers and sisters; the young man 
who has just been, as well as he who is just 



120 Turning Points in the 

going to be, married ; all are equally seized 
in its unrelenting grasp. I have seen a 
conscript, the son of a blind mother, com- 
pelled to march. I have seen carried off in 
three successive years the three sons of a 
handicraftsman, who had bred them to his 
own occupation, and who beheld himself, 
at the age when his strength had left him, 
bereft of the support to which he had fondly 
looked during many years of labor and 

solicitude A ma3'or who 

should presume to protect a conscript with- 
out being powerfully supported would incur 
certain ruin. Several mayors have been 
branded with a hot iron, as guilty of 
forgery, have been condemned to be ex- 
posed to 'the public view' (the pillory), or 
to the galleys, for having favored certain 
young men by giving them certificates de- 
claring them incapable of service. Over no 
operation does terror so arbitrarily preside 
as over that of the conscription."* 

It should be remembered that this mili- 
tary reign of terror extended over provinces 
of Germany and other countries then sub- 
ject to France. So great was the dread of 
punishment for any evasion of the conscrip- 
tion, that when a river in what is now 
Rhenish Prussia overflowed the ordinary 
routes of travel, the conscripts plunged 

* "Sketches of the Internal State of France." M. Faber, 
1812. 



World's History. 121 

into the stream up to their necks, and made 
their way in time to the place appointed 
for rendezvous. ' ' You are traveling, ' ' said 
the author previously quoted. "Presently 
you are stopped. A numerous crowd ob- 
structs the highway. The clanking of 
chains; plaintive voices ; an escort of cavalry; 
naked swords; men pale and emaciated, 
heads shaven, hideously dressed, dragging 
fetters and cannon balls, form a shocking 
procession on the road. Of what atrocious 
crime, great God! are these miserable 
wretches guilty, to be reduced to so abject 
and deplorable a condition ? They are re- 
fractory conscripts and deserters who, col- 
lected in the depots in a department, are 
transported to a fortress in the interior. ' ' 

M. Pasquier, who, different from the 
writer first quoted, was friendly to Napoleon, 
draws in his Memoirs a deeply impressive 
picture of the exhaustion of France under 
militarism. "The number of refractory 
conscripts,' ' he says, "increased daily to an 
alarming extent, and it is easy for those 
who can recall what were then the laws 
against refractory conscripts, and every- 
thing that was devised to punish in the 
parents the resistance of the children, it is 
easy, I say, to form an idea of the perturba- 
tion which was bound to invade the whole 
of society from the daily enforcement of 
laws which had become so odious. The 



122 Turning Points in the 

peace of even the most humble dwellings 
was continually troubled, and the cottage, 
given up in spite of its poverty to the 
bailiff, fell a prey to sufferings until then 
unknown." 

Such is the other side, the sombre side, 
the human side, of Napoleon's glory and 
Napoleon's triumphs. France and the ad- 
joining regions were robbed of the flower 
of their manhood to win the victories and 
endure the sacrifices which make the story 
of the First Empire so brilliant and so 
tragic. " There did not remain," says 
Pasquier, writing of the levies of 1813, "a 
single family which was not in terrible 
anxiety or mourning." What a picture of 
the Moloch of war ! What a price to pay 
for the fame of having dictated terms to 
Europe! It is not strange that even in 
France there were murmurs of rebellion ; it 
would have been strangely unnatural, had 
German and Hollander and Swiss submitted 
willingly to the minotaur which devoured 
them in the name of liberty. It is not 
strange that the Spaniard concluded that he 
might better perish fighting for Spain than 
for France. 



The country which gained most in 
national spirit, character and development 
was Italy. "The master carver," says 



World' s History. 123 

Professor Thayer, "cut her into several 
slices to feed his favorite clogs of war; 
nevertheless she gained much. She 
woke from torpor to activity; she 
lived in the Present. Instead of being 
stranded like a rotting hulk, she was once 
more swept into the current of European 
destiny. The Napoleonic administration, 
though autocratic, was centuries in advance 
of that of Pope or Bourbon. Antiquated 
placemen were laid on the shelf. Civilians 
succeeded to ecclesiastics in every depart- 
ment of government. The Code Napoleon 
did away with mediaeval courts, recognized 
equality before the law, and promoted 
respect for justice. Incessant campaigns 
and the military conscription not only 
made the Italians fighters — between 1796 
and 1814 Italy furnished 360,000 soldiers to 
the imperial armies — but also broke down 
provincial barriers and encouraged national 

vSpirit Above all, Italy learned 

that her petty princes, and even the pope 
himself, whom Italians had regarded as 
necessary and incurable evils, could be 
ousted by a strong hand. Thus were the 
Italians rejuvenated by contact with the 
European autocrat ; thus did they store up 
some of the strength and courage which are 
given out in da}'S of stress and mighty un- 
dertakings. ' ' * 

* " Dawn of Italian Independence." , 



124 Turning Points in the 

It is significant of the friendly sentiment 
of Italy toward the Empire that there was 
no fire in the rear from the Italian people 
when Napoleon was engaged in the final 
struggle against his allied enemies. The 
Italians felt that the Empire had, in their 
case, constructed, instead of destroying a 
nation, and they also felt that, however 
heavy their burdens under Napoleon, those 
burdens were light compared with the 
abominable misrule of the petty tyrants 
whom the French had expelled. The unity 
and the deliverance of Italy can be directly 
and clearly traced to the work of the First 
Napoleon. 

Germany, while a grievous sufferer, was 
also benefited in most important respects by 
the successes of Napoleon. The old feudal 
rubbish, which he cast aside as useless, was 
never again dragged from the attic of the 
past. Many of the petty sovereigns whom 
he displaced from their toy principalities 
were not recalled from obscurity when the 
tide of war ebbed back beyond the Rhine. 
The Germans, like the Italians, learned 
that they were a nation, and the very hatred 
which they bore the conqueror made their 
national spirit the stronger. Northern 
Germany also acquired a prestige and pre- 
ponderance in German affairs which pres- 
aged the consummation of 1870. The 
Prussians learned the art of war anew from 



World' s History. 125 

their peerless adversary, and discarding the 
obsolete system of Frederick the Great, they 
laid the foundation of that military organi- 
zation which is now the most perfect in the 
world. 

Russia, whose emperor was arbiter in the 
readjustment of Europe, after Napoleon, 
was brought into closer relations than ever 
before with western powers and became a 
factor never again to be ignored in the set- 
tlement of international issues. England 
added vastly to her colonial empire, and 
made up from the plunder of France and 
Spain and Holland, for her losses in North 
America. With Napoleon in St. Helena 
England saw but one rival in the Old 
World, and that was Russia, and she has 
been watching Russia ever since. 

Spain went back to her Bourbons, and 
they, with thorough Bourbon bigotry, forth- 
with resurrected the Inquisition, just as if 
the car of civilization could be rolled back 
three centuries by royal decree. Torture 
was restored, and the common people were 
sharply taught that they had the same old 
masters.* Nevertheless, even in Spain the 
influences springing from French occupa- 

* The following item of news in a newspaper of 1817— after 
the Bourbon restoration— reads like a leaf from the fifteenth 
century: "-Pamplona, Feb. 10th. On the 2d, 3d and 4th of 
this month, and in the prison of this city, the torture was 
inflicted on Captain Olivan, who, for this purpose, was 
brought down from the citadel, where he had been confined 
during eight months, merely because he was suspected of 



126 Turning Points in the 

tion and the example of the French Revo- 
lution could not be entirely suppressed, and 
the Bourbon rulers were at length obliged 
to reluctantly concede some measure of a 
freeman's rights to their subjects. 



On the American side of the Atlantic the 
effects of the French Revolution were hardly 
less important than in Europe, The revolt 
of Spanish America, and the separation of 
Brazil from Portugal, insured an inde- 
pendent future to the American continent. 
In our own Republic the principles of the 
French Revolution made a deep impression, 
and gave an irresistible impulse to demo- 
cratic ideas. Although the party, now 
knowm as Democratic, may perhaps be 
traced back to the Leisler period in the 
North and Bacon's Rebellion in the South, 
the French Revolution infused into that 
party a spirit which has never been extin- 
guished. It might almost be said that up 
to a recent period at least, American poli- 
tics, apart from the slavery struggle, 
turned on the issues of the French Revolu- 
tion. 



disaffection to government. Amidst the most excruciating 
pangs, no other than energetic declarations of his own in- 
nocence were heard, as well as of that of more than thirty 
other officers confined with him under similar circum- 
stances." 



World's History. 127 



XII.— THE MONROK DECLARATION. 

The independence of South America in- 
directly resulted from Napoleon's conquest 
of Spain. The Spanish-Americans, like 
the American colonists before the Revolu- 
tion, were loyal to the motherland, and 
when they heard of the French invasion, 
and the establishment of an alien king in 
Madrid, they organized, not to assert their 
own independence, but to aid in driving the 
stranger from the peninsula. With that 
fatuous selfishness and intolerance which 
has always characterized Spanish officialism 
in the colonies, the viceroys treated the 
very evidence of the people's loyalty as in- 
subordination, and by their cruelties com- 
pelled the colonists to raise in self-defence 
the standard of revolution. 

Arbitrary measures, instead of extin- 
guishing the spirit of independence, only 
served to enliven its latent sparks and blow 
them into flame. Miranda died in chains, 
and Hidalgo, the patriot priest of Mexico, 
was put to death by his cruel captors, but 
Bolivar and Paez, Sucre and San Martin, 
led the patriot armies to ultimate victory, 
and established the independence of Spanish 
America. Only one great revolutionary 
leader, Iturbide, failed to follow the ex- 
ample of Washington. Iturbide attempted 



128 Turning Points in the 

to found an imperial dynasty in Mexico, 
and lost his life and his crown. Bolivar, 
on the other hand, with a foresight worthy 
of Washington himself, sought to form a 
general confederation of all the States of 
what was formerly Spanish America, with 
the object of uniting the resources and 
means of the several States for their general 
defence and security. This great project 
was accepted by Chile, Peru and Mexico, 
and treaties concluded in accordance there- 
with. 

Intelligent self-interest inspired the 
United States and England to support the 
independence of South America. England's 
motive was chiefly commercial and partly 
political. She wanted Spanish America to 
be independent because the continent would 
thus be thrown open to British commerce, 
and because, not looking forward herself to 
territorial aggrandizement in that direction, 
she wished other powers to keep their hands 
off. The British Government had no de- 
sire, in taking this position, to promote the 
growth and extension of republican institu- 
tions. The ruling class in Great Britain 
would doubtless have preferred to see every 
Spanish-American State a monarchy, pro- 
vided that under monarchy it could be 
equally useful to the British empire and 
independent of every other European power. 
If England, in championing the Spanish- 



World's History. 129 

American republics, seemed to champion 
republican institutions, it was because re- 
publican institutions gave the strongest as- 
surance of political separation from Europe, 
and of a free field for Great Britain.* 

On the part of the United States the 
Monroe Doctrine was the formal and 
authoritative expression of a sentiment 
which had animated American breasts 
from the origin of the Republic. The 
Monroe Doctrine is based on patriotism 
and self-preservation, and the crisis which 
called it forth was of the gravest conse- 
quence to the American people. The 
Spanish empire in America had never been 
a menace to the United States. It was too 
decrepit to be dangerous. Conditions 
would have been very different with 
France, for instance, or Prussia, established 



*"The Spanish-American question is essentially settled. 
There will be no Congress upon it, and things will take 
their own course on that continent which cannot be other- 
wise than favorable to us. I have no objection to monarchy 
in Mexico ; quite otherwise. Mr. Harvey's instructions 
authorize him to countenance and encourage any reason- 
able project for establishing it (project on the part of the 
Mexicans I mean), even in the person of a Spanish Infanta. 
But, as to putting it forward as a project, or proposition of 
ours, that is out of the question. Monarchy in Mexico, and 
monarchy in Brazil, would cure the evils of universal de- 
mocracy, and prevent the drawing of the line of demark- 
ation, which I most dread, America versus Europe. The 
United States naturally enough aim at this division, and 
cherish the democracy which leads to it. But I do not much 
apprehend their influence, even if I believed it. I do not 
altogether see any of the evidence of their activity in 
America. Mexico and they are too neighborly to be 
friends."— Canning, to the British Minister at Madrid, De- 
cember ji, 1823. 
9 



130 Turning Points in the 

as a great South American power. There 
was the strongest reason for believing that 
the governments of continental Europe 
combined in the "Holy Alliance" seriously 
intended to dispose the destinies of South 
America, as they had divided the continent 
of Europe. The primary object of the 
allied powers — the proscription of all politi- 
cal reforms originating from the people — 
could leave no doubt of the concern and 
hostility with which they viewed the de- 
velopment of events in Spanish America, 
and the probable establishment of several 
independent, free States, resting on institu- 
tions emanating from the will and the valor 
of the people. But there is more specific 
evidence of their hostile intentions — Don 
Jose Vaventine Gomez, envoy from the gov- 
ernment of Buenos Ayres at Paris, in a 
note to the secretary of his government of 
the twentieth of April, 1819, said that "the 
diminution of republican governments was 
a basis of the plans adopted by the Holy 
Alliance for the preservation of their thrones 
and that in consequence, the republics of 
Holland, Venice, and Genoa, received their 
deathblow at Vienna, at the very time that 
the world was amused by the solemn decla- 
ration that all the States of Europe would 
be restored to the same situation they were 
in before the French Revolution. The 
sovereigns assembled at Aix la Chapelle 



World' s History. 131 

have agreed, secretly, to draw the Ameri- 
cans to join them in this policy, when Spain 
should be undeceived, and have renounced 
the project of re-conquering her provinces; 
and the king of Portugal warmly promoted 
this plan through his ministers. ' ' France 
also sought by intrigue to secure the ac- 
ceptance by the United Provinces and Chile 
of a monarchical government under French 
protection. 

For the reasons before stated these de- 
signs naturally alarmed Canning, England's 
distinguished Minister of Foreign Affairs, 
and he proposed to Mr. Rush, the American 
Minister at London, that Great Britain and 
the United States should join in a protest 
against European interference with the in- 
dependent States of Spanish America. 
This was in September, 1823, and in a 
message of December 2, following, Presi- 
dent Monroe uttered his famous declaration 
to the effect that ' ' the United States would 
consider any attempt on the part of the 
European powers to extend their system to 
any portion of this hemisphere as danger- 
ous to our peace and safety. ' ' * Mr. Mon- 
roe's motive in issuing this declaration was 

*"They (the United States) have aided us materially. 
The Congress (Verona) was broken in all its limbs before, 
but the President's (Monroe's) speech gives it the coup de 
grace. While I was hesitating in September what shape to 
give |the protest and declaration I sounded Mr. Rush, the 
American Minister here, as to his powers and disposition 
to join in any step which we might take to prevent a 



132 Turning Points i7i the 

wholly American and patriotic. England's 
designs were inevitably aided by the action 
of the American President, and the English 
Government approved and their press ap- 
plauded America's resolute course, but it 
was not to win English applause, but to de- 
fend the integrity of the United States that 
the Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed to the 
world. The opposition of Great Britain and 
the attitude of the United States proved more 
than the Holy Alliance cared to confront, 
and the nations of Spanish America were 
allowed to enjoy, without further molestation 
the independence which they had gained b} r 
years of heroic effort and sacrifice. 

The " Monroe Doctrine," so-called, has 
since been accepted b}' the American people 
as a principle to be enforced at any cost in 
their dealings with other nations. The 
French were compelled to retire from Mex- 
ico, the English to take their grasp from 
Venezuela in obedience to warnings which 
offered no other choice save war with the 
United States. Behind those warnings 
were millions of fighting men of the same 

hostile enterprise on the part of the European powers 
against Spanish America. He had not power, but he 
would have taken upon himself to join with us if we 
would have begun oy recognizing the Spanish-American 
States. This we could not do, and so we went on alone. 
But I have no doubt that his report to his government of 
this sounding, which he probably represented as an over- 
ture, had a great share in producing the explicit declara- 
tions of the President."— Canning to" the British Minister at 
Madrid. 



World's History. 133 

race that conquered at Waterloo and Tra- 
falgar, and resources unsurpassed bj^ any 
nation in the world. Any European power 
prepared to defy the Monroe Declaration 
must face America in arms. This is not 
"jingoism," it is not braggodocio; it is 
the calm determination of a great people, 
who have gained their liberties at priceless 
cost, and who mean that those liberties 
shall not be imperilled by alien intrusion on 
the American continent. 

The American people make no claim to 
right of interference with self-rule in the 
other American republics. Our neighbors 
can indulge in revolutions and pronuncia- 
mentos; they can change their presidents 
every week and be governed by military 
dictators, or any other native tyrants as 
they please — but free from subjection to 
European power they shall be while an 
American arm can aim a rifle and an Amer- 
ican forge can fashion the armor -plate for 
our battleships. 

President Monroe thought but little, 
probably, of the full scope of his famous 
message. It was a declaration of inde- 
pendence for the American continent — the 
charter of liberty for half the world. Euro- 
pean nations have blustered about it, and 
sneered at it, but they have never yet dared 
to defy it. When they do, if ever they do, 
they will find America ready. 



134 Turning Points in the 

XIII.— ENGLAND'S COMMERCIAL 
TURNING-POINT. 

PEEL LAUNCHES FREE TRADE. 

The adoption of a free trade policy by 
Great Britain in 1842, was the commercial 
turning-point of the century. And yet, 
while it is true that England has made 
wonderful progress in commerce and in 
manufactures since the adoption of a free 
trade policy, it is equally and historically 
true that the foundation of England's pros- 
perity was laid, and the strong fabric was 
erected during a period of protection which 
lasted for over two centuries, protection 
which was prohibition in its earlier, and 
in some forms, of its later stage, and which, 
not content with a mere embargo on the 
products of alien nations, inspired the wars, 
and dictated the policy of the empire in 
stamping out foreign and colonial rivalry. 
It was this policy which provoked the 
American Revolution, and which embroiled 
England in conflict with the Dutch. The 
wars against Holland were in the line of 
commercial aggrandizement, and resulted 
in the subjection to the English crown and 
to English commerce of the colonial posses- 
sions of that industrious people. 

One identical policy guided British ad- 
ministration in dealing with America and 



World's History. 135 

with Ireland, and that was to prevent the 
building up of trade, or the establishment 
of any industry that might conflict with 
English monopoly. ''The year before the 
Peace of Ryswick," writes Webber, in his 
Account of the Woolen Manufactories, 
quoted in J. Gee's Trade and Navigation 
(1730), "the English, jealous lest Ireland, 
by being able to work the woolen goods 
cheaper than they could do, would by that 
means supplant them in foreign markets, 
took the following occasion to cramp their 
free trade with other nations which they 

then enjoyed It was agreed 

that Ireland should lay a tax of four shillings 
on the pound on all woolen goods exported 
to foreign markets. Upon this England 
became fearful that the Irish, not having, 
as before, the opportunity of their foreign 
trade, might prejudice the English manu- 
factories, by importing woolen goods to 
England cheaper than we could have them 
here; and therefore they prohibited the im- 
portation of woolen goods from Ireland to 
England, except only to the five wool ports, 
and subjected all such goods to duties laid 
on them by antecedent acts." While 
America asserted her rights by successful 
revolution, Ireland, deprived of the manu- 
factures, except flax and linen, which had 
commenced to flourish, notwithstanding 
almost continuous and devastating strife, 



136 Ticrnifig Points in the 

sank into abject industrial as well as politi- 
cal dependence, and into an apathy re- 
lieved by occasional spasmodic uprisings 
against the power which at once enslaved 
and enfeebled her. 



The policy of protection by heavy import 
duties afforded to the English producer and 
manufacturer an ever-extending market, not 
only in the British Isles, but in the terri- 
tories which were continual^ being an- 
nexed at the expense of the blood and 
treasure of the English people, while the 
wars consequent upon the Revolution in 
France enabled the British to sweep from 
the seas the remnant of Continental com- 
merce which had survived previous aggres- 
sions. The growth of the British empire, 
and of British capital and enterprise during 
the early part of the nineteenth century, 
proved the effects of protection in building 
up the wealth and strength of the nation, 
and had it been only a question of protect- 
ing manufacturing industries, England 
would have had a high tariff to-day. The 
paramount issue of a free food supply, con- 
sequent upon increasing population, over- 
came, however, all other considerations, 
and the agriculturists refused to be sacri- 
ficed without an accompanying surrender 
on the part of the manufacturers, among 



World's History. 137 

whom, indeed, were found some of the 
leading advocates of free trade in food. 

The movement, which was initiated as an 
agitation for the repeal of the corn laws, 
and which had its origin and centre in the 
manufacturing districts, where the artisans 
were most severely affected by the prohibi- 
tive tariff on corn from abroad, gradually 
extended in its scope until it embraced a 
demand for the reduction of duties on all 
foreign articles to such a scale as might 
admit of a fair competition with domestic 
produce, the object being, as stated by Sir 
Robert Peel in his introductory speech in 
parliament in 1842, "to make a consider- 
able reduction in the present price of living 
in England, as compared with the price of 
living in other countries. ' ' Four years 
later, in the great debate which preceded 
the adoption of free trade as the commercial 
policy of England, Sir Robert Peel explained 
why, in his opinion, England could, under 
the new policy, continue to command the 
markets of the world. "We stand," he 
said, "on the confines of Western Europe, 
the chief connecting link between the old 
world and the new. The discoveries of 
science, the improvements in navigation, 
have brought us within ten days of St. 
Petersburg, and will soon bring us within 
ten days of New York. We have an ex- 
tent of coast greater, in proportion to our 



138 Turning Points i?i the 

population and the area of our land, than 
any other great nation, securing to us mari- 
time strength and superiority. Iron and 
coal, the sinews of manufacture, give us 
advantages over every rival in the great 
competition of industry. Our capital far 
exceeds that which they can command. In 
ingenuity, in skill, in energy, we are in- 
ferior to none." 

Such were the cogent reasons advanced 
by England's leading statesman why the 
system of protection, pursued for two hun- 
dred years, and which had elevated Great 
Britain to the proud and imperious situ- 
ation he so eloquently pictured, should 
give place to free trade. And says Mon- 
gredien, himself an earnest supporter of 
the free trade movement, "the adoption 
of free trade principles was not the result 
of pressure from adverse circumstances. 
The country was flourishing, trade was 
prosperous, the revenue showed a surplus, 
railways were being constructed with un- 
exampled rapidity, the working classes 
were fully and remuneratively employed, ' ' 
and all this under a tariff, which was not 
only protective, but in some respects pro- 
hibitory. The reasons stated by Sir Robert 
Peel show clearly why England was ready 
and willing to challenge the competition of 
the world. She was without a rival; un- 
limited capital, a degree of skill in man- 



World's History. 139 

ufacture which our American industries 
are as yet far from having achieved, iron 
and coal almost at her furnaces, the com- 
mand of the carrying trade of the world — 
all these were the weapons and the invin- 
cible armor which protection had forged for 
Great Britain to be armed with in the battle 
of free trade. 




140 Turning Points in the 

XIV. —LINCOLN'S DEATH-BLOW 
TO SLAVERY. 

The abolition of slavery in the United 
States was the work of Americans. Eng- 
lish agitation of the subject and English 
abolition in the West Indies had no appre- 
ciable effect in promoting the cause of 
emancipation in America. On the con- 
trary, British attacks on the institution of 
slavery in the United States had a tendency 
to arouse resentment on the part of Ameri- 
cans, and to retard and embarrass the steps 
toward liberation. Nevertheless the anti- 
slavery agitators in America and England 
were inspired by a common sentiment — that 
better sentiment of an age which induced a 
Howard to devote life and fortune to his 
suffering fellow men; and which gave birth 
to a Wilberforce and a Whittier. 

The lowest class of labor was the labor 
of bondmen in nearly all countries until 
a comparatively recent period. It is an 
interesting fact that there was a time when 
the English of both sexes were not onl}^ 
exposed for sale in the markets of Europe, 
but transported and sold in Africa. Be- 
tween the fifth and eleventh centuries, in- 
deed, it would have been no abuse of 
language to call a great part of Englishmen 
beasts of burden. Our word team, though 



World's History. 141 

derived from the original Saxon, which 
signified children, came nevertheless by its 
present meaning, from being applied to 
slaves who ranked with cattle of all kinds, 
under the general denomination of living 
money. Dr. Henry tells us in his "History 
of Great Britain," that, "for some time 
after the settlement of the Saxons in Eng- 
land, their slaves were in the same circum- 
stances with their horses, oxen, cows and 
sheep, except that it was not fashionable to 
kill and eat them." 

The Magna Charta secured the rights of 
freemen only. Servitude of the most ab- 
ject kind existed long after King John, and 
was expressly recognized by English law.* 

Bondage in England gradually died out, 
without any special enactment, although it 
was not until late in the eighteenth century 
that the last remnant of slavery was abol- 



* A statute of Edward VI. provided^hat " if any persou 
shall bring to two justices of the peace any runagate 
servant, or other which liveth idle or loiteringly, by the 
space of three days, the said justices shall cause the said idle 
and loitering servant or vagabond, to be marked with a hot 
iron on the breast, with the mark V, and adjudge him to be 
a slave of the same person that brought or presented him, 
to have him, his executors, or assigns, for two years after; 
so shall he take the said slave, and give him bread, water or 
small drink, and refuse meat, and cause him to work by 
beating, chaining, or otherwise, in such work or labour as 
he shall put him unto, be it never so vile. And if such slave 
absent himself from the said master within the said term of 
two years, by the space of fourteen days, then he shall be 
adjudged by the two justices of the peace, to be marked on 
the forehead, or the ball of the cheek, with a hot iron, with 
the sign of an S, and further shall be adjudged to be slave lo 
the said master for ever. 



142 Turning Points in the 

ished in Great Britain by the release of col- 
liers and salters from their obligation to 
perpetual service. In our own country 
the form of white servitude known as "re- 
demption" — the sale of labor for a term of 
years to pay the cost of passage from Europe 
to America — existed in the early part of the 
present century. 



Servitude was abolished in Russia about 
the beginning of the American Civil War, 
but it should be unnecessary to say that 
there was no relation between the emanci- 
pation of the Russian serfs and that of the 
American negroes, although these memor- 
able events occurred within two years of 
each other. Previous to the Emancipation 
Act of 1 86 1 all peasants in Russia were 
serfs of the State, the Crown or the nobility. 
The soldiers, being at that time, and until 
1873, enrolled exclusively from the masses 
of the peasantry and the burghers, did not 
return to the condition of serfs on their re- 
lease from military service, but formed a 
class by themselves. 

The Russian serfs belonging to a private 
person lived on his land, and cultivated a 
part of the soil for their own special benefit. 
This part of the land was called the peas- 
ants' lot, and the serfs were bound to till 
the remainder of the land for their master's 



World's History. 143 

benefit. Practically, although not legally, 
the peasants owned the land they cultivated 
for their own use. They even enjoyed 
some vestiges of self-government, and the 
landlords seldom interfered in their private 
and personal affairs. The State and Crown 
peasants were personally free, but under the 
guardianship of the Department of Crown 
Lands and of the Ministry of State Domains. 
It w 7 ill be seen, therefore, that there was 
no similarity between the condition of the 
American negro slave and that of the Rus- 
sian serf, although immortal honor attaches 
to the name of the czar, Alexander II., 
who, by his ukase of March 3, 1861, eman- 
cipated twenty-three millions of his subjects, 
and by the same memorable decree endowed 
them not only with freedom, but with com- 
munal self-government. It may be that the 
Russian Emperor had in mind that this 
great act of justice and of humanity might 
have a favorable influence on the cause of 
union and liberty in the United States, but 
whether such was the case or not, he de- 
serves to be remembered as one of the bene- 
factors of mankind. 



Negro slavery survived so long, because 
it was color slavery — the enslavement of a 
race, which, if not inferior by nature, had 
become inferior through centuries of bar- 



144 Turning Points i?i the 

barism and oppression, to Europeans and 
their American descendants. The slave- 
holders saw that only by maintaining this 
inferiority could slavery be maintained; 
hence the laws against teaching negroes to 
read or write. The negro was to be kept 
as near to the brute as possible, as an ex- 
cuse for being treated as a brute. 

Public sentiment, alike in America and 
England, was opposed to the slave trade, 
audit is significant as showing the progress 
pari passu of opinion on both sides of the 
Atlantic that, while the American Constitu- 
tion in 1789 provided that the slave trade 
might be prohibited by Congress not prior 
to 1808, William Wilberforce, also in 1789, 
first proposed the abolition of the slave-trade 
in the House of Commons, and the slave- 
trade was prohibited by the United States 
and Great Britain almost simultaneously. 

Agitation continued in Great Britain for 
the abolition of slavery in the British colo- 
nies. With England the question was 
hardly a political one. There were no 
slaves in Great Britain, and the colonies 
had no voice in parliament. Jamaica and 
the other slave-holding islands were help- 
less, so far as offering any resistance to the 
will of the British government, and 
although the West India planters protested 
earnestly and vigorously, and even uttered 
empty threats, the Imperial Parliament at 



World's History. 145 

length voted to emancipate the slaves, pay- 
ing to the owners an indemnification 
amounting to about one hundred millions of 
dollars. 



This act of Great Britain, followed by 
French abolition in 1848, left the United 
States alone among important and highly 
civilized nations as a slave-holding country, 
and here the battle between freedom and 
slavery w T as brought to an issue. Here 
almost from the beginning of the century 
the nation had been divided in two sections 
on the slavery question, and it grew in 
gravity with the progress of the century. 
The Union, to quote the language of Abra- 
ham Lincoln, could not have survived half 
slave and half free, but slavery might have 
survived the nineteenth century but for the 
Fugitive Slave Law and the Kansas-Ne- 
braska- bill, which broke down the barriers 
between the free and slave States, and per- 
mitted the slave- owner and slave-hunter to 
range all over the Union, protected by Fed- 
eral laws in the possession of human chat- 
tels. 

In another work* I have endeavored to 
describe the slavery conflict, and it is un- 
necessary to repeat that history here. The 

* " The I^and We Live In," Christian Herald Library for 
1897. 

10 



146 Turning Points in the 

Fugitive Slave Law was the prologue of the 
tragedy which ended in the complete eman- 
cipation of American slaves. From the 
day that law was enacted only cowardice 
on the part of the North could have pre- 
vented war, and even then war would only 
have been postponed, for the South would 
have demanded more and more guarantees 
and imposed greater humiliations. Indeed, 
it brings a blush to the cheeks of a Northern 
reader even now to see the terms which a 
Congress controlled by Northern votes was 
willing to offer to the South to prevent se- 
cession, and which the South contemptu- 
ously spurned. 

The Emancipation Proclamation of Pres- 
ident Lincoln, although an act of war, was 
the long-withheld answer of the North to 
the Fugitive Slave Law and the repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise. The victory of 
Northern arms made the Emancipation 
Proclamation effective, and slavery ceased 
in the United States with the surrender of 
the Confederate armies. The former slaves 
are now citizens, and, as a rule, law-abid- 
ing and industrious citizens. 

When slavery fell in the United States it 
ceased to have standing anywhere. Hol- 
land, the only other reputable nation which 
held slaves up to that time, also conferred 
freedom in 1863, and Brazil soon after pro- 
vided for gradual emancipation. 



World's History. 147 

Slavery still exists, but in no part of the 
world which pretends to be civilized, and 
the recent extension of European power in 
Africa has struck a final blow at the very 
core of the traffic. At last, not in America 
alone, but wherever Christianity's arm can 
reach, the cry of Whittier is answered: 

1 ' Speak ! shall their agony of prayer 

Come thrilling to our hearts in vain ? 
To us whose fathers scorned to bear 

The paltry menace of a chain ; 
To us whose boast is loud and long 

Of holy Liberty and Light; 
Say shall these writhing slaves of Wrong 

Plead vainly for their plundered Right?" 




148 Turning Points in the 

XV.— THE GENEVA TRIBUNAL. 

arbitration's first victory. 

Arbitration, as a means of settlement of 
important international differences, was vir- 
tually unknown before the Washington 
Treaty of 187 1. It is true that history is 
not without instances of the adjustment by 
a third party of questions at issue between 
States, or between factions in a State nomi- 
nally independent of the arbitrator ; but it 
will be found that in every such instance 
one or both of the parties submitting to ar- 
bitration acted in some degree under foreign 
compulsion. The Geneva Arbitration was 
the first instance in which two great powers, 
with an issue at stake which would other- 
wise have led to war, chose to submit the 
controversy to the judgment of an impartial 
tribunal, instead of appealing to the arbitra- 
ment of arms. For that reason it was a 
memorable turning-point in history. 

In i860, the United States had been an 
independent nation for a period of eighty- 
four years, and acknowledged as such by 
Great Britain for seventy-seven years. 
During this period, while sharing to a re- 
markable extent in the general prosperity 
of the Christian Powers, they had so con- 



World's History. 149 

ducted their relations toward those Powers 
as to merit, and they believed that they had 
secured, the good-will and esteem of all. 
Their prosperity was the result of honest 
thrift; their exceptional increase of popu- 
lation was the fruit of a voluntas immigra- 
tion to their shores ; and the vast extension 
of their domain was acquired by purchase 
and not by conquest.* 

From no people had the United States 
better right to expect a just judgment than 
from the people of Great Britain. In 1783, 
the War of Separation had been closed by 
a treaty of peace, which adjusted all the 
questions then pending between the two 
governments. In 1794, new questions hav- 
ing arisen, growing out of the efforts of 
France to make the ports of the United States 
a base of hostile operations against Great 
Britain, a new treaty was made, at the in- 
stance of the United States, by which all 
the difficulties were arranged satisfactorily 
to Great Britain, and at the same time so 
as to preserve the neutrality and the honor 
of the United States. In the same j^ear, 
also, the first neutrality act was passed by 
Congress, prescribing rules and establishing 
the modes of proceeding to enable the 
United States to perform their duties as a 
neutral toward Great Britain and other 

*See " Papers Relating to the Treaty of Washington— Case 
of the United States." Government Printing Office. 1872. 



150 Turning Points i?i the 

belligerents. In 18 12, they were forced 
into war with Great Britain, by the claim 
of that Power to impress seamen on the high 
seas from vessels of the United States. After 
three years the war ceased, and the claim 
has never since been practically enforced. 

In 1 818, the United States met British 
negotiators more than half-way in arrang- 
ing disputed points about the North Amer- 
ican fisheries. In 1827, having added to 
their own right of discovery the French 
and Spanish titles to the Pacific coast, they 
voluntarily agreed to a joint occupation of 
a disputed portion of this territory, rather 
than resort to the last arbitrament of na- 
tions. In 1838, when a serious rebellion 
prevailed in Canada, the Congress of the 
United States, at the request of Great 
Britain, passed an act authorizing the gov- 
ernment to exercise exceptional powers to 
maintain the national neutrality. In 1842, 
the Government of the United States met a 
British envoy in a spirit of conciliation, 
and adjusted by agreement the disputed 
boundary between Maine and the British 
possessions. In 1846, the United States 
accepted the proposal of Great Britain, 
made at American suggestion, to adopt the 
forty-ninth parallel as a compromise line 
between the two Columbias, and to give to 
Great Britain the whole of Vancouver's 
Island. 



World's History. 151 

In 1850, the American Republic waived, 
by the Clayton -Bulwer Treaty, the right 
of acquisition on the Isthmus of Pan- 
ama. In 1854, the American Government 
conferred upon the people of the British 
possessions in North America the advan- 
tages of a free, full commercial intercourse 
with the United States for their products, 
without securing corresponding benefits in 
return. Thus a series of difficult ques- 
tions, some of which might have led to 
war, had been peaceably arranged by nego- 
tiations, and the increasing intercourse of 
the two nations was constantly fostered by 
continuing acts of friendliness on the part 
of the government of the United States. 



All the political relations of the United 
States with Kngland, with the exception of 
the episode of the War of 18 12, had been 
those of increasing amity and friendship, 
confirmed by a repeated yielding of extreme 
rights, rather than imperil the cordial re- 
lations which the United States so much 
desired to maintain with their nearest 
neighbors, their best customers, and their 
blood relations. They had good right, 
therefore, to believe, and they did believe, 
that, by virtue of this friendly political un- 
derstanding, and in consequence of the 
gradual and steady assimilation of the com- 



152 Turning Points in the 

mercial interests and the financial policies 
of the two governments, there was in Great 
Britain, in the summer of i860, sympathy 
for the government and affection for the 
people of the United States. They had 
equal reason to think that neither the 
British Government nor people would 
look with either ignorance or unconcern 
upon any disaster to them. Above all, 
they had at that time a right to feel confi- 
dent that, in any controversy which might 
grow out of the unhappy existence of Afri- 
can slavery in certain of the Southern 
States, the British Government would not 
exercise its sovereign powers, questionably 
or unquestionably, in favor of the support- 
ers of slavery. 



Therefore, when the war of secession 
began, the United States had no cause to 
anticipate that the course of Great Britain 
would be, as it proved to be, not only un- 
friendly, but virtually hostile, to our 
national government, that the British 
Government would, as it did, hasten to 
recognize the Confederacy as a belligerent 
power even before the British Cabinet had 
official knowledge that a state of war ex- 
isted here, and that a Confederate navy 
would be constructed, armed and manned 
in British ports to destroy American com- 



World's History. 153 

merce. Agents of the insurgents acted on 
British soil as if England was an ally of the 
Confederacy, and the conduct of the British 
Cabinet seemed to justify the assumption. 

When information against the "Florida" 
was conveyed to the British Secretary of 
State for Foreign Affairs, he interposed no 
objection to her sailing from Liverpool. 
When the overwhelming proof of the com- 
plicity of the Alabama was laid before 
him, he delayed to act until it was too late, 
and then, by his neglect to take notice of 
the notorious criminals, he encouraged the 
guilty Laird to construct the two rebel rams 
— the keel of one of them being laid on 
the same stocks from which the Alabama 
had just been launched. When the evi- 
dence of the character and destination of 
those rams was brought to his notice, he 
held it for almost two months, although 
they were then nearly ready to go to sea, 
and then at first refused to stop them. 
Wiser and more just counsels prevailed 
four days later. But when Mr. Adams, 
under instructions from his government, 
transmitted to Karl Russell convincing 
proof of "a deliberate attempt to establish 
within the limits of this kingdom (Great 
Britain) a system of action in direct hos- 
tility to the government of the United 
States," embracing, "not only the building 
and fitting out of several ships of war under 



154 Turning Points in the 

the direction of agents especially commis- 
sioned for the purpose, but the preparation 
of a series of measures under the same 
auspices for the obtaining from Her 
Majesty's subjects the pecuniary means 
essential to the execution of those hostile 
projects," Lord Russell refused to see in the 
inclosed papers any evidence of those facts 
worthy of his attention, or of the action of 
Her Majesty's government. 

Karl Russell spoke against the Union in 
public speeches, and urged that "the san- 
guinary conflict' ' should be brought to an 
end — of course by the destruction of the 
Union. He declared in Parliament that 
the "subjugation of the South by the 
North" would be "a great calamity," "a 
calamity to the United States and to the 
world. ' ' Laird, the builder of the Ala- 
bama, was cheered when he arose in Par- 
liament to assert that he "would rather be 
handed down to posterity as the builder of 
a dozen Alabamas than as the man who 
applies himself deliberately to get class 
against class and to cry up the institutions 
of another country, which, when they came 
to be tested, are of no value whatever, and 
which reduced liberty to an utter ab- 
surdity." 

Even Mr. Gladstone was carried away by 
the prejudice of the governing classes of 



World's History. 155 

England against America. "We do not 
believe," he said, "that the restoration of 
the American Union by force is attainable. 
I believe that the public opinion of this 
country is unanimous upon that subject. 
(No!) Well, almost unanimous. I may 
be right or I may be wrong — I do not pre- 
tend to interpret exactly the public opinion 
of the country. I express in regard to it 
only my private sentiments. But I will go 
one step further, and say I believe the pub- 
lic opinion of this country bears very 
strongly on another matter upon which we 
have heard much, namely, whether the 
emancipation of the negro race is an object 
that can be legitimately pursued by means 
of coercion and bloodshed. I do not believe 
that a more fatal error was ever committed 
than when men — of high intelligence, I 
grant, and of the sincerity of whose phil- 
anthropy, I, for one, shall not venture to 
whisper the smallest doubt — came to the 
conclusion that the emancipation of the 
negro race was to be sought, although the}^ 
could only travel to it by a sea of blood. I 
do not think there is any real or serious 
ground for doubt as to the issue of this con- 
test." 

As late as the ninth of June, 1864, Karl 
Russell said in the House of Lords: "It 
is dreadful to think that hundreds of thou- 
sands of men are being slaughtered for the 



156 Turning Points in the 

purpose of preventing the Southern States 
from acting on those very principles of in- 
dependence which in 1776 were asserted by 
the whole of America against this country. 
Only a few years ago the Americans were 
in the habit, on the Fourth of July, of cele- 
brating the promulgation of the Declaration 
of Independence, and some eminent friends 
of mine never failed to make eloquent and 
stirring orations on those occasions. I 
wish, while they keep up a useless cere- 
mony — for the present generation of 
Englishmen are not responsible for the 
War of Independence — that they had incul- 
cated upon their own minds that they 
should not go to war with four millions, 
five millions, or six millions of their fellow- 
countrymen who want to put the principles 
of 1776 into operation as regards them- 
selves. ' ' 

These sentiments, publicly uttered by 
members of the British Government, jus- 
tified the United States in assuming that in 
permitting armed vessels to go forth from 
British ports, and fly the flag of the Confed- 
eracy as privateers engaged in war against 
the United States and the destruction of 
American property, the British authorities 
were designedly and culpably remiss in the 
performance of their duties both under in- 
ternational law and the municipal law of 
Great Britain. The aid given by Great 



World's History. 157 

Britain was an important part of the rebel- 
lion. It swept the seas almost clear of the 
American carrying trade; it supplied the 
Southern States with many of the neces- 
saries of war, and it helped to prolong the 
conflict, thereby causing enormous addi- 
tional expenditure of blood and treasure on 
the part of the American people. It is not 
strange that when the Confederacy fell, and 
the Union was triumphant over its domestic 
enemies, a general demand arose in the 
North that Great Britain should be called 
to account for its share in the conflict. 
Abraham Lincoln had said, "one war at a 
time, ' ' after the Trent affair, and it seemed 
that the time had come for another. 



Fortunately in higher quarters a spirit 
of conciliation prevailed, and while the 
government at Washington was determined 
to obtain redress for the wrongs inflicted, it 
resolved to exhaust all peaceable and hon- 
orable means before resorting to the decision 
of arms. After prolonged negotiations the 
Treaty of Washingto , signed in May, and 
ratified in June, 1871, provided that all 
complaints and claims growing out of the 
escape of the " Alabama" and other Anglo- 
Confederate war vessels from British ports 
should be "referred to a Tribunal of Arbi- 
tration, to be composed of five arbitrators, 



158 Turning Points in the 

to be appointed in the following manner, 
that is to say : One shall be named by the 
President of the United States; one shall be 
named by Her Britannic Majesty; His 
Majesty the King of Italy shall be re- 
quested to name one; the President of the 
Swiss Confederation shall be requested to 
name one, and His Majesty the Emperor 
of Brazil shall be requested to name one. ' ' 
"Incase of the death, absence, or incapa- 
city to serve of any or either of the said 
arbitrators, or in the event of either of the 
said arbitrators omitting or declining or 
ceasing to act as such, the President of the 
United States, or Her Britannic Majesty, 
or His Majesty the King of Italy, or the 
President of the Swiss Confederation, or 
His Majesty the Emperor of Brazil, as the 
case may be, may forthwith name another 
person to act as arbitrator in the place and 
stead of the arbitrator originally named by 
such head of a State. And in the event of 
the refusal or omission for two months after 
receipt of the request from either of the 
contracting parties of His Majesty the 
King of Italy, or the President of the Swiss 
Confederation, or His Majesty the Em- 
peror of Brazil, to name an arbitrator, 
either to fill the original appointment, or 
in the place of one who may have died, be 
absent, or incapacitated, or who may omit, 
decline, or from any cause cease to act as 



World's History. 159 

such arbitrator, His Majesty the King of 
Sweden and Norway shall be requested to 
name one or more persons, as the case may 
be, to act as such arbitrator or arbitrators. ' ' 
The Tribunal of Arbitration was to meet 
at Geneva, Switzerland, and the decision 
of the Tribunal to be delivered, if possible, 
within three months after the close of the 
arguments on both sides. The contracting 
parties engaged to consider the result of 
the proceedings as a full, perfect and final 
settlement. The Tribunal awarded $15,- 
500, 000 damages in gold for the vessels and 
cargoes destroyed by the three Anglo-Con- 
federate cruisers and their tenders, and this 
amount was paid over to the United States 
by Great Britain. 



The principle of arbitration has been 
applied to other issues between the United 
States and Great Britain, the most signal 
instance being that of the disputed Vene- 
zuela boundary, in which the United States 
appeared as the champion of the weak 
South American State, and compelled Eng- 
land to withdraw from the arrogant position 
which that country has commonly assumed 
toward inferior nations. It is to be noted, 
however, that the principle of international 
arbitration has not yet been generally ac- 
cepted, and that in the cases where it has 



160 Turning Points in the 

prevailed the parties interested adopted it, 
not from motives of humanity, but wholly 
from self-interest. England was defeated 
in the fall of the Confederacy, and accepted 
arbitration as a dignified cover for retreat 
from an untenable position. The British 
had no desire to do directly the fighting 
which they had helped others to do. They 
had failed in attempting to break down the 
Union with batteries masked by Confeder- 
ate redoubts, and they wanted to resume 
friendly relations with the power they could 
not destroy. The American people, on the 
other hand, were in a temper to fight both 
France and England, if necessary, in vin- 
dication of American rights, and to punish 
indirect attacks on the security and unity 
of the Republic. Both France and England 
counted the cost, and both yielded to 
American demands, France by withdraw- 
ing from Mexico, and England by consent- 
ing to the arbitration of an issue which no 
honorable arbitrator could decide in her 
favor. 

Arbitration has, therefore, so far been 
accepted not as a substitute for war, but as 
a plan to be resorted to when less expensive 
than war and more honorable than surren- 
der. It is significant that great powers in 
dealing with lesser States refuse to counte- 
nance arbitration. When they know the 
advantage of strength to be on their side 



World's History. 161 

they stand upon that advantage, and they 
accept arbitration only when war would be 
certain to cost them more than a peaceable 
adjustment. In other words, arbitration so 
far has been a recognition, not of justice, but 
of force. This is not a satisfactory or a 
promising condition of affairs. Interna- 
tional arbitration should be founded, like 
judicial decisions between man and man, 
on a general recognition of what is right 
and what is wrong, and a general determi- 
nation that the right shall prevail. Until 
that time comes civilized nations will not 
be far in advance of the barbarous tribes of 
the forest in the settlement of their mutual 
difficulties, save in the refinement and in- 
genuity of mutual slaughter. Neverthe- 
less the Alabama Claims arbitration was a 
grand step toward universal peace and good- 
will, and the United States, as the party 
that had been signally injured and whose 
patience and magnanimity made arbitration 
possible, can point with satisfaction, that 
will grow as years roll on, to the Treaty of 
Washington. 



1 62 Turning Points in the 

XVI.— INDUSTRIAL TURNING 
POINTS. 

WATT MAKES STEAM WORK. 

Greater in its influence on mankind than 
any invention since printing, the discovery 
of steam power was the most important 
event of the eighteenth century. Euro- 
peans had visited America before Colum- 
bus, and Watt was not the first to perceive 
and study the qualities of steam. The 
ancients knew something of its force, and 
as early as 1623, Solomon de Caus, a French 
engineer, published a book in Paris on 
" moving forces," in which he said that 
"if water be sufficiently heated in a close 
ball of copper, the air or steam arising from 
it will at last burst the ball with a noise 
like the going off of a petard." He also 
actually describes a method of raising 
water, as he expresses it, by the aid of 
fire, which consists in the insertion in the 
containing vessel of a perpendicular tube 
reaching nearly to its bottom, through 
which, he says, all the water will rise when 
sufficiently heated. The agent here is the 
steam produced from part of the water by 
the heat, which, acting by its expansive force 
upon the rest of the water, forces it to make 
its escape in a jet through the tube, the 
supply of the water being kept up through 



World's History. 163 

a cock in the side of the vessel. Later in 
the seventeenth century the Marquis of 
Worcester described in his wonderful dis- 
coveries of the age what he called "an ad- 
mirable and most forcible way to drive up 
water by fire." "I have seen," he says, 
"the water run like a constant fountain - 
stream forty feet high ; one vessel of water 
rarefied by fire driveth up forty of cold 
water. ' ' Sir Samuel Morland, Denis Papin, 
Savery and other ingenious persons gave 
the world from time to time new informa- 
tion about the effects of heated water and 
steam. The invention, however, most wor- 
thy of notice previous to Watt was an en- 
gine constructed about the year 171 1 by 
Thomas Newcomen, an ironmonger, and 
JohnCalley, a glazier, both of Dartmouth, in 
Devonshire, England. This contrivance pro- 
ceeded on the principle of making steam 
the moving power in the machinery, the 
weight of the atmosphere acting upon a 
piston so as to carry it down through a vac- 
uum created by the condensation of the 
steam. Newcomen' s engine was applied 
to various important purposes, but it was 
by no means capable of securing the com- 
plete command of the energies of steam. 
It is most noteworthy as having been the 
immediate object-lesson which suggested 
Watt's great invention. 



164 Turning Points in the 

James Watt, a native of Greenock, Scot- 
land, was from boyhood deeply interested 
in mechanical science. He was mathemati- 
cal instrument maker to the college at 
Glasgow, and his association with Dr. 
Black and other distinguished members of 
the University served greatly to enlarge his 
knowledge and sharpen his instinct for 
scientific research. After living some 
years at the college Watt removed to the 
city, and entered upon the profession of a 
general engineer. He acquired a high 
reputation and was extensively employed 
in making surveys and estimates for 
canals, harbors, bridges and other public 
works. 

While attending to his duties as en- 
gineer he found time to study the employ- 
ment of steam as a mechanical agent, a 
subject to which his attention had been 
directed by Dr. John Robison, of Glasgow 
University, an author of treatises on me- 
chanics. 

A model of Newcomen's engine having 
been sent to Watt in the winter of 1763-4 
he perceived its imperfections and began to 
turn in his mind the possibility of employ- 
ing steam in some new manner which 
should enable it to operate with much more 
powerful effect. Having become possessed 
of this idea, Watt started on a series of ex- 
periments for the purpose of ascertaining 



World's History. 165 

as many facts as possible with regard to 
the properties of steam. He found that 
the rapidity with which the water evapo- 
rated depended simply on the quantity of 
heat which was made to enter it, and this 
again on the extent of the surface exposed 
to the fire. He also ascertained the quan- 
tity of coal necessary for the evaporation of 
any given quantity of water, the heat at 
which the water boiled under various pres- 
sures, and many other particulars never 
before accurately determined. 

It is needless to follow Watt through the 
series of experiments and discoveries which 
resulted in the construction of a real steam 
engine, and which entitle him to be re- 
garded as the author of the practical use of 
steam as the chief motive power in our 
modern civilization. Without pecuniary 
resources of his own, and without friends 
willing to risk their money in his behalf, 
he struggled along under much discourage- 
ment. At length he found a helper in Dr. 
Roebuck, of the Carron ironworks, near 
Glasgow, and an engine was constructed 
with a cylinder of eighteen inches diame- 
ter, which, although far from perfect in all 
its parts, demonstrated the great value of 
Watt's improvements. Owing to pecuni- 
ary difficulties Dr. Roebuck had to with- 
draw from the enterpirse, and Watt formed 
a connection with Boultoii, the eminent 



1 66 Turning Points in the 

hardware manufacturer of Birmingham. 
The firm of Boulton and Watt commenced 
the business of engine-making in 1775, and 
from that year may be dated the age of 
steam. 



MURDOCK GIVES LIGHT. 

It is an interesting fact that the manu- 
factory of Messrs. Boulton and Watt was 
one of the first places lighted with gas 
distilled from coal. To William Murdock 
belongs the credit, not of discovering the 
illuminating power of gas, but of putting 
it to practical use, and the inventor of the 
steam engine was among the earliest to 
perceive the value of Murdock' s experi- 
ment. Gas has been a most important fac- 
tor in building up nineteenth century civil- 
ization, especially in our large cities. It 
is a potent moral agent, a foe of public dis- 
order and revolution, and it would have 
been difficult, if not impossible, for science 
and industry to have achieved their present 
conditions without illuminating gas. 



FULTON PLOUGHS THE HUDSON. 

To an American, Robert Fulton, is due 
the application of steam-power to the 
movement of vessels in the water. Fulton 



World* s History. 167 

was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylva- 
nia, in the year 1765; his father died in 
1768, leaving little patrimony to his chil- 
dren. Robert Fulton, the son, was attached 
in his youth to drawing and painting, and 
from his earnings and savings in this pro- 
fession between his seventeenth and twenty- 
second year, he purchased a small farm in 
Washington County, Pennsylvania, on 
which he settled his mother; who re- 
mained on it till her death in 1799. Ful- 
ton, therefore, commenced his career of life 
by sacrificing the profits of his earliest ex- 
ertions to make his surviving parent com- 
fortable and independent. This was a 
commencement of excellent augury. 

Fulton went to England to study paint- 
ing. While in that country he turned his 
attention to the construction and use of 
navigable canals, a subject then of the 
greatest interest both in America and Eu- 
rope. He invented a torpedo for the de- 
struction of vessels of war, and at length 
he approached the great problem, the solu- 
tion of which was to earn for him the grati- 
tude of mankind — steam navigation. 

Others had attempted to navigate vessels 
by means of steam, but until Fulton under- 
took the task, no one had succeeded in the 
attempt for any practical or useful purpose. 
Fulton was fortunate in encountering at an 
early date in his efforts the Hon. Robert 



1 68 Turning Points in the 

R. Livingston, American Minister to 
France, who was himself interested in 
steam navigation. Mr. Livingston had, in 
March, 1798, obtained an exclusive right 
for steam navigation from the New York 
Legislature, but his experiments were abor- 
tive as to any practical utility. He had 
the merit, however, of rightly appreciating 
Mr. Fulton's talents. He joined Mr. Ful- 
ton in the plan of steam navigation; and 
in 1803 they jointly built a boat which was 
propelled by steam on the Seine, at Paris, 
with so much success, that, on their return 
to New York, in 1806, the project was put 
in execution without delay. Fulton gave 
directions for a steam engine to Boulton 
and Watt, which was executed in such a 
manner as to give the experiment fair 
play. With this engine the first successful 
steamboat, built under Fulton's direction, 
navigated the Hudson in 1807. 

To show how little pretensions the Eng- 
lish have to this discovery, I quote the fol- 
lowing extract from the London Monthly 
Magazine for October, 18 13: "We have 
made it our special business to lay before 
the public all the particulars we have been 
able to collect relative to the invention of 
steam passage boats in America, and their 
introduction into Great Britain; because 
we consider this invention as worth to man- 
kind more than a hundred battles gained, 



World's History. 169 

or towns taken, even if the victors were 
engaged in a war, which might have some 
pretence to be called defensive and neces- 
sar}^. " 

The history of the steamboat, since Ful- 
ton, would be a history of navigation, in- 
deed, of civilization. The steamboat has 
brought Europe and America within a few 
days' distance of each other. It has en- 
abled commerce to penetrate every sea ; it 
bears the missionary and the trader into 
the heart of Africa, and propels the vast 
machines of traffic, of pleasure and of war, 
compared with which the vessels of the 
Armada, of Drake and Magellan were pig- 
mies. 

STEPHENSON'S " ROCKET" FUES. 

It is a singular fact that although rail- 
ways had been in use in the transfer of coal 
from mines to places of shipment in the 
early part of the seventeenth century, it 
was not until 1830, many years after the 
success of steam navigation had been de- 
monstrated, that the first steam railway 
was opened for traffic. 

Considerable credit is due to Richard 
Trevithick for his invention of a self-acting 
steam carriage, for wmich he took out a 
patent in 1802, and which successfully drew 
railway wagons at Merthyr-Tydvil in 1804. 



170 Turning Points in the 

This, the first locomotive, drew only ten 
tons of bar iron at the rate of five miles an 
hour. It appears to have been Trevithick's 
intention to move carriages for the ordinary 
use of traffic by means of his locomotive, 
but the public did not view his plan with 
favor, and the powerful canal interests, in 
which large capital was invested, discour- 
aged any improvement in the direction of 
land carriage. 



George Stephenson made railway travel 
by steam-power practical, and was the 
founder of the railway systems of to-day. 
The career of Stephenson had its lesson of 
deepest interest and value for every man 
laboring against apparently insurmounta- 
ble difficulties. His father supported a 
family of six by tending a colliery engine 
for twelve shillings — about three dollars — 
a week. Young Stephenson was glad to 
eke out the family income by herding cows 
for four cents a day, and later on hoeing 
turnips at eight cents a day. Being ap- 
pointed fireman in a colliery, he gave him- 
self to the study of the steam engine. It 
is of interest to note that when but twenty- 
one years of age he married a young woman 
of his own station in life, but was left a 
widower two years later. 

Stephenson managed to pay eight cents 



World's History. 171 

a week out of his earnings for lessons in 
reading, writing and arithmetic. He had 
a hard struggle, and wept bitterly, he tells 
us, over the thought that he might have to 
emigrate. He first attracted public atten- 
tion by inventing a colliery safety-lamp, 
which brought him some income. He was 
then about thirty-five years of age, and three 
years later he married his second wife, the 
daughter of a farmer. About the same 
time he constructed his first locomotive, 
and his great improvement, the "steam- 
blast, ' ' made rapid railway travel possible. 
In 182 1, Stephenson was appointed engineer 
for the construction of the Stockton and 
Darlington Railway, which, however, could 
not be considered a railway in the modern 
sense, and soon afterward he was chosen 
engineer of the proposed line between Liv- 
erpool and Manchester. 

When Stephenson's locomotive, the 
"Rocket," proved itself capable of going 
at the speed of twenty-five miles an hour 
the world awoke at last to the possibilities 
of steam travel. Said a writer of 1831: 
"Another application of steam which has 
been made only within the last few months 
is perhaps destined to be productive of still 
greater changes in the condition of society 
than have resulted from any of its previous 
achievements. It had been employed sev- 
eral years ago at some of our collieries in 



172 Turning Points in the 

the propelling of heavily loaded carriages 
over railways; but the great experiment of 
the Liverpool and Manchester Railway has* 
for the first time, demonstrated with what 
hitherto almost undreamt-of rapidity trav- 
eling by land may hereafter be carried on 
through the aid of steam. Coaches, under 
the impetus communicated by this, the most 
potent and at the same time the most per- 
fectly controllable of all our mechanical 
agencies, have already been drawn forward 
at the flying speed of thirty and thirty -two 
miles an hour. If so much has been done 
already it would be rash to conclude that 
even this is to be our ultimate limit of at- 
tainment But even when the 

rate of land traveling already shown to be 
quite practicable shall have become univer- 
sal, in what a new state of society shall we 
find ourselves ! When we shall be able to 
travel a hundred miles in any direction in 
six or eight hours, into what comparative 
neighborhood will the remotest extremes, 
even of a large country, be brought, and 
how little shall we think of what we now 
call distance ! A nation will then indeed 
be a community; and all the benefits of the 
highest civilization, instead of being con- 
fined to one central spot, will be diffused 
equally over the land, like the light of 
heaven. This improvement, in short, w T hen 
fully consummated, will confer upon man 



World' s History. 1 73 

nearly as much new power and new enjoy- 
ment as if he were actually endowed with 
wings." 

Steam has already far surpassed even the 
prediction which we have quoted. It is 
the right arm of civilization, laboring un- 
ceasingly in the field, the factory, the mart 
of trade and the dwelling-place of civilized 
man. It has made possible the industrial 
system of to-day, with its gigantic concen- 
tration of human and mechanical energies; 
a system which seems to render inevitable, 
within the coming century, social and po- 
litical changes of the most radical char- 
acter. 



FRANKLIN DRAWS THE LIGHTNING. 

Some one has said that ' ' Franklin drew 
the lightning from the sky and Morse made 
it speak. ' ' While ancients as well as 
moderns had some knowledge of electricity, 
it was not until the year 1746 that the dis- 
covery was made of the possibility of ac- 
cumulating large quanties of the electric 
fluid by means of what was called the Ley- 
den jar, or phial. The announcement of 
the wonders of the L,eyden jar excited the 
curiosity of all Europe, and led to many ex- 
periments by persons interested in the new 
and mysterious power. Dr. Franklin wit- 
nessed some of these experiments at Bos- 



174 Turning Points in the 

ton, and when he went back to Philadel- 
phia, soon after, he devoted much of his 
time to electrical study. He did not rest 
content with ascertaining the principle of 
the Leyden phial, but made an applica- 
tion of the principle in the construction of 
an electrical battery. He also proved that 
lightning was caused by electricity. "If 
two gun-barrels electrified, " he said, "will 
strike at two inches distance and make a 
loud report, at how great a distance will ten 
thousand acres of electrified cloud strike, 
and give its fire; and how loud must be 
that crack!" Franklin's experiment with 
the kite and key has often been related. 
Seeing a thunderstorm approachiug he took 
a walk into a field in which there was a 
shed. He was accompanied hy his son to 
assist him in his experiments. They car- 
ried with them a kite, made of a large silk 
handkerchief, stretched over two cross- 
sticks, this simple apparatus being intended 
to draw the lightning from its cloud. The 
kite was held by a hempen string. The 
kite being raised, Franklin fastened a key 
to the lower extremity of the string, and 
then insulating it by attaching it to a 
post by means of silk, he placed himself 
under the shed, and awaited the result. 

For some time no signs of electricity ap- 
peared. A cloud, apparently charged with 
lightning, had even passed over them with- 



World's History. 175 

out producing any effect. At length, how- 
ever, just as Franklin was beginning to 
despair, he observed some loose threads of 
the hempen string rise and stand erect, ex- 
actly as if they had been repelled from each 
other by being charged with electricity. 
He immediately presented his knuckle to 
the key, and to his inexpressible delight, 
drew from it the electrified spark. It is 
said that his emotion was so great at this 
completion of a discovery which was to 
make his name immortal that he heaved a 
deep sigh, and felt at that moment he would 
have willingly died. As the rain increased 
the cord became a better conductor and the 
key gave out electricity copiously. 

Franklin also ascertained by experiment 
that distance made virtually no difference 
of time in the passage of electricity. In 
a circuit of several miles he could observe 
no difference of time between the touch at 
one extreme and the spark at the other. 
We have the authority of Professor Samuel 
Finley Breese Morse himself that it was 
Franklin's experiments which suggested to 
Morse the transmission of intelligence by 
means of the electric wire. 



MORSE S HAPPY THOUGHT ON SHIPBOARD. 

Professor Morse was, as he himself states, 
not deep in the mysteries of electricity. 



176 Turning Points in the 

Having come to the conclusion that the 
electric current could be transmitted in- 
stantaneously, he applied himself to the dis- 
covery of some practical method for con- 
veying intelligence by means of that cur- 
rent; and doubtless this concentration of 
his energies on the one practical point, ir- 
respective of abstract research and experi- 
ment, had much to do with his success in a 
field neglected by men much deeper in elec- 
trical science. Professor Morse says, in 
defending his claim to the invention of 
telegraphy : 

"From the autumn of the year 1829 till 
the autumn of the year 1832, I was in Eu- 
rope, principally in Italy. I conceived 
the telegraph on board the ship (Sully), 
in 1832, while on my return home, essen- 
tially as it now exists. It was operated in 
my rooms before numerous persons, my 
pupils and others, in 1835; it was exhib- 
ited to a large audience of a thousand or 
more persons through ten miles of wire in 
the New York City University in the au- 
tumn of 1837 J to a committee of the Frank- 
lin Institute in Philadelphia in January, 
1838 ; to Congress and the Cabinet at Wash- 
ington for three months in the early part 
of that year; to the Academy of Sciences 
and thousands of visitors in Paris in the 
autumn of 1838; to members of the Royal 
Society of both Houses of Parliament, and 



World' s History 177 

the Lords of the Admiralty at Lord Lin- 
coln's in London, in the mouth of March, 
1839, and after all this I first became ac- 
quainted, either personally or by correspon- 
dence, with Professor Henry. ' ' 

The Professor Henry alluded to was 
Professor Joseph Henry, of Princeton Col- 
lege, to whom Professor Morse applied for 
some information on the subject of electric- 
ity, after the Morse invention had been 
completed, and who was mentioned by some 
people as the real author of telegraphy. 
On this question the following written by 
Professor Henry to Professor Morse in 
1842, ought to be decisive: 

' ' The idea of transmitting intelligence to 
a distance by means of electric action has 
been suggested by various persons from the 
time of Franklin to the present ; but until 
within the last few years, or since the prin- 
cipal discoveries in electro-magnetism, all 
attempts to reduce it to practice were ne- 
cessarily unsuccessful. The mere sugges- 
tion, however, of a scheme of this kind is 
a matter for which little credit can be 
claimed, since it is one which would natu- 
rally arise in the mind of almost any per- 
son familiar with the phenomena of elec- 
tricity ; but the bringing it forward at the 
proper moment, when the developments of 
science are able to furnish the means of cer- 
tain success, and the devising of a plan for 



178 Turning Points in the 

carrying it into practical operation, are the 
grounds of a first claim to scientific reputa- 
tion, as well as public patronage." 

Professor Morse was always indignant at 
any intimation that his invention did not 
originate with himself, and on this point 
he makes the following sound observations 
regarding inventions in general: 

"It is often assumed that an invention 
is prompted and perfected by a knowledge 
of former attempts by others to realize a 
similar result. The dates of these are re- 
corded in chronological sequence, as if the 
latter attempts depended upon and were 
the resultants of the former. Such se- 
quence is often imaginary. Indeed, it sel- 
dom exists. It is much more frequently 
the case that an invention is conceived and 
perfected wholly in ignorance of any pre- 
vious attempts by others. ' ■ 



"It was at table in the cabin," wrote 
Professor Morse to Dr. Charles T. Jackson, 
of Boston, another claimant, "just after we 
had completed the usual repast at midday. 
We were conversing on recent scientific dis- 
coveries. The question was asked by a 
passenger if electricity was retarded by the 
length of the wire. You replied no, that 
the electricity passed instantaneously over 
any known length of wire, and you then 



World's History. 179 

alluded, in proof, to the experiment of Dr. 
Franklin, who had made many miles in cir- 
cuit near Philadelphia (London). He as- 
certained the velocity of electricity, but 
could observe no difference of time between 
the touch at one extreme and the spark at 
the other. I then remarked, 'This being 
so, if the presence of electricity can be 
made visible in any desired part of the cir- 
cuit I see no reason why intelligence should 
not be transmitted instantaneously by elec- 
tricity. ' ' ' 

Professor Morse then relates how he lay 
awake at night thinking over the problem, 
and how he devised a system of signs, and 
constructed a species of type, which he 
drew in his sketch-book, and by which he 
proposed to regulate the passage of elec- 
tricity. 

The struggle was not over when Profes- 
sor Morse had worked out his plan of tele- 
graphy. He filed his caveat at Washing- 
ton in 1837, and made a public exhibition 
of his discovery in the same year. During 
several years following he appealed in vain 
to Congress and to foreign governments for 
aid in establishing a telegraph line. At 
length, when Morse had almost given up 
hope, Congress, in the last moments of the 
session of 1843, appropriated $30,000 for 
an experimental line between Washington 
and Baltimore. After the success of his 



180 Turning Points in the 

system had been fully demonstrated, Pro- 
fessor Morse had to face long and expen- 
sive litigations in defence of his rights; but 
he finally triumphed over every obstacle, 
and in the latter part of his life he enjoyed 
in full measure the honor and wealth which 
he had so arduously earned. 



CYRUS field's first cable message — 

" GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST." 

Professor Morse was the author of the 
idea of submarine telegraphy. About the 
same time that he originated his land tele- 
graph system he announced to the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury "that a telegraphic 
communication on his plan might, with 
certainty, be established across the Atlan- 
tic." To the late Cyrus W. Field, how- 
ever, is due the credit for having carried 
the idea into practice, after surmounting 
with patience, energy and enterprise unsur- 
passed difficulties and disappointments 
which would have amply excused failure. 
" Europe and America are united by tele- 
graph. Glory to God in the highest; on 
earth peace and good will towards men , ' ' 
were the words that flashed under the 
ocean, August 17, 1858. This cable 
ceased working after a few weeks, and the 
great civil war soon afterward distracted 



World's History. 181 

the American people from everything save 
that tremendous conflict. Disaster again 
attended the plan to lay a cable in 1865, 
but in 1866 the undertaking was renewed, 
and successfully accomplished, and from 
that time to the present communication by 
submarine telegraph oetween America and 
Europe has been an established fact. So 
perfect and convenient is that communica- 
tion that, when a great storm interrupted 
telegraphic communication between New 
York and Boston — a distance of about two 
hundred and forty miles-- in March, 1888, 
messages were exchanged between the two 
cities under the ocean by way of London. 



The value of telegraphy to mankind is 
inestimable. In addition to its uses in 
commerce and trade, and the personal 
affairs of life, it makes the whole civilized 
world a board of censors on the actions of 
public men everywhere. Through the tel- 
egraph public opinion in all parts of the 
globe is brought to bear simultaneously on 
the course of events. Wars are often thus 
prevented, and peace, when it comes, puts 
an immediate end to conflict. The War of 
18 1 2, for instance, lasted for months, and 
its principal battle was fought after peace 
had been declared. Thousands of lives 
would have been saved if the Treaty of 



1 82 Turning Poijits in the 

Ghent could have been made known at 
once in New Orleans. 

The cable bearing to every part of civili- 
zation news of the brave battle of the Boers 
in defence of their liberties quickened pub- 
lic sentiment in their behalf, and was in- 
strumental in staying the arm of England, 
outstretched to destroy them. Had the 
fight at Majuba Mountain occurred before 
the age of the telegraph, England would 
have avenged the defeat and crushed the 
Boers before the rest of mankind had even 
learned that the struggle was going on. 
Barbarism, as well as civilization, feels the 
influence of the electric spark flashing its 
light into those dark places of the earth, 
which, the inspired writings sa}% are ''the 
habitations of cruelty. " The Sultan in his 
chamber, the autocrat in his fortress-palace, 
are compelled to bow to the power which 
the telegraph evokes. 



BELL AND EDISON MAKE LIGHTNING TALK. 

The telephone, invented about twenty 
years ago by Alexander Graham Bell, and 
made practical by Thomas A. Edison and 
others, seems to promise a time when men 
will converse with each other, though thou- 
sands of miles apart. It is generally be- 
lieved that the telephone, already in gen- 



World's History. 183 

eral use, would have been made far more 
useful than it is now, but for the restrict- 
ing influence upon its development of the 
vast capital invested in telegraph systems. 
The electric light, in the improvement 
of which Edison has added greatly to his 
fame, besides acquiring large wealth, is 
turning night into day in many of our 
cities, and is coming into use also in fac- 
tories, shops and dwellings, instead of 
gaslight, although gas continues to be 
profitable to its makers and acceptable to 
the public. 



steam's fellow-titan. 
The greatest recent development in elec- 
trical science has been the conversion of 
electricity into mechanical power. Elec- 
tricity, as a motive power, is where steam 
was when Fulton launched his first steam- 
boat. Its possibilities seem incalculable. 
It can be conducted great distances from 
the source of supply, and bring Niagara to 
the doors of New York. It can utilize the 
far-away mountain stream in running the 
machinery of the city factory. It may yet, 
in a vast degree, supersede steam, and it 
may be that in the harnessing of our great 
American cataract we witness another turn- 
ing-point of the centuries. 



184 Turning Points in the 

ARKWRIGHT'S SPINNING MACHINE — HOW A 
BARBER BECAME A NOBLEMAN. 

It is not the purpose of the compiler of 
this work to indulge in observations on the 
political economy of machinery or to dis- 
cuss the arguments advanced for and 
against the industrial conditions that have 
arisen within the present century. This 
book is intended to deal with facts, not 
with theories. It may be proper, however, 
to remark that there is much to be said on 
both sides of the machinery and labor-sav- 
ing question, and that a great good may 
become an evil when carried to extremes. 
The changes which have occurred since 
machines run by water . and steam-power 
took the place of handiwork have added to 
national wealth at some cost of individual 
independence, and have made the luxuries 
of the past the cheap and general comforts 
of the present. To a certain limit they 
broadened the field of labor, but the evi- 
dence is now altogether too manifest that 
the limit has been passed, and that the ten- 
dency of concentrated capital, with ma- 
chinery as its weapon, is to restrict the op- 
portunity of the toiler to earn a living for 
himself and his family. 

Until the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
tury manufacturing was almost universally 



World's Histo?y. 185 

— as the word itself indicates — handiwork, 
aided by rude implements, and a few recent 
improvements, which still left the operative 
in a large degree his own master. There 
were master manufacturers, but the} 7 de- 
pended upon the cottagers for their mate- 
rial, and the latter were in a position more 
like that of contractors than of employes 
bound to certain hours of service. 



The manufacture of cotton goods in Eng- 
land received a considerable impetus, about 
1760, from increased exportation to Amer- 
ica and to the continent. The thread had 
hitherto been spun entirely by the tedious 
process of the distaff and spindle, the spin- 
ner drawing out only a single thread at a 
time. As the demand for the manufac- 
tured article continued to increase, a greater 
and greater scarcity of weft was experi- 
enced, till, at last, although there were fifty 
thousand spindles constantly at work in 
Lancashire alone, each occupying an indi- 
vidual spinner, they were insufficient to 
supply the quantity of thread required. 
The weavers generally in those days had 
the weft used spun for them by the females 
of their family. Those weavers whose 
families could not furnish the necessary 
supply of weft had their spinning done by 
their neighbors, and were obliged to pay 



1 86 Turning Points in the 

more for the spinning than the price al- 
lowed by their masters. 

It was no uncommon thing for a weaver 
to walk three or four miles in a morning, 
and call on five or six spinners, before he 
could collect weft to serve him for the re- 
mainder of the day, and when he wished to 
weave a piece in a shorter time than usual, 
a new ribbon or gown was necessary to 
quicken the exertions of the spinner. * 

It was natural, under these circumstances, 
that ingenious individuals should turn their 
attention to contrive some improved method 
of spinning, and it was then that a man 
working at the humble calling of a barber 
conceived and invented the machinery 
which eventually superseded the cottage 
system of manufacturing. 



Sir Richard Arkwright was born at Pres- 
ton, in Lancashire, England, in 1732, of 
very poor parents, being the youngest of 
thirteen children. He had very little, if 
any, schooling, and was brought up to the 
barber's trade, which he followed until 
thirty years of age. Arkwright had a 
genius for mechanics, which even his mo- 
notonous routine at the barber's chair could 
not suppress. He became acquainted with 
a clockmaker named Kay, and from this 



♦Guest's " History of the Cotton Manufacture." 



World's History. 187 

connection dates his entrance upon a new 
career. 

Arkwright and Kay appeared at Preston 
in 1767, and occupied themselves with the 
erection of a machine for spinning cotton 
thread, of which they brought a model with 
them. They prevailed upon a Mr. Smalley, 
who is described as a liquor merchant and 
painter, to join them in their speculation, 
and the machine was put together in the 
parlor of the dwelling-house attached to the 
free grammar school, the use of which 
Smalley had obtained from his friend, the 
schoolmaster. At that time Arkwright 
was so poor that, an election taking place 
in the town, his friends had to subscribe to 
get him a new suit of clothes before he 
could present himself at the poll-room. 

As soon as the election was over Ark- 
wright and Kay moved to Nottingham, 
being apprehensive of the hostility of the 
people of Lancashire to the introduction of 
spinning by machinery. There Arkwright 
submitted his model to Messrs. Need and 
Strutt, stocking makers of that place. Mr. 
Strutt, who was himself an ingenious stu- 
dent of mechanics, inspected the model and 
saw its value, and he and Mr. Need at once 
agreed to enter into partnership with Ark- 
wright, who accordingly, in 1769, took out 
a patent for the machine as its inventor. 
A spinning mill, drawn by horse-power, 



1 88 Tumi?ig Points in the 

was at the same time erected and filled with 
the frames. 

Arkwright did not claim to be in all re- 
spects the inventor of the machinery known 
by his name. He admitted that as to some 
of the designs included in his patent he 
had improved rather than invented. He 
attributed the conception of the spinning- 
jenny to one Hargreaves, who had lived at 
Blackburn, and who had been driven out 
of Lancashire in consequence of his inven- 
tion, and died in obscurity and distress. 

Arkwright' s invention was the turning- 
point in giving to England pre-eminence 
in manufactures, and was the starting-point 
of cotton manufactures in America. Ark- 
wright was fought on eve^ side by the 
very manufacturers whom he did so much 
to benefit, and his principal patent was 
annulled by the adverse decision of a jury. 
His remarkable energy, however, carried 
him through every struggle, and his busi- 
ness ability enabled him to accumulate a 
considerable fortune. A few years before 
his death he received the honor of knight- 
hood. 



HOW SLATER SMUGGLED ARKWRIGHT 'S 
MACHINE IN HIS BRAIN. 

Samuel Slater, the 'father of cotton man- 
ufactures in America, was an apprentice to 



World's History. 189 

Strutt, the partner of Arkwright. The 
laws of England forbade anyone to convey 
models out of the country, and Slater, when 
he determined to emigrate to the United 
States, had to rely upon his memory for the 
reproduction of the Arkwright machinery. 
Slater was fortunate in attracting the at- 
tention of Moses Brown, an eminent mer- 
chant, of Providence, R. I., with whose 
aid he established his first factory at Paw- 
tucket, in that State. 



Aided by water-power, steam and gas, 
and with electric power also recently 
brought into service, manufacturing has 
grown enormously in every civilized coun- 
try, and especially in the United States and 
Western Europe. In the United States, in 
England, in Germany, Belgium and France, 
the markets are generally over-supplied 
with goods, as compared with the ability 
of the people to buy, and protective bar- 
riers have been raised nearly everywhere, 
save in Great Britain and Belgium, to pre- 
serve the native market to the resident 
manufacturers. And while the markets 
are thus glutted with an over-abundance of 
manufactured goods, and multitudes are 
clamoring in vain for leave to toil, inven- 
tive genius is at work in both hemispheres 
seeking to make it possible for the employer 



190 Turning Points in the 

to get along with fewer employes by means 
of labor-saving machines. 

Thus the ranks of unemployed labor are 
continually recruited through labor-saving 
inventions, and in this country, also, 
through virtually unrestricted immigration. 
The barrier of protection is raised higher 
and higher on this side of the Atlantic only 
to be challenged by ingenious devices for 
reducing the cost of production on the other 
side. Tidings of prosperity in English or 
German manufacturing centres are received 
with a pang, as if it were a blow at our- 
selves, while the news that operatives in 
this or that part of Europe have been 
driven to the soup-house and suicide is 
hailed with hardly concealed satisfaction. 



The market for labor is being still 
further narrowed by the formation of vast 
combinations of capital, generally known 
as ' ' trusts, ' ' which control certain lines of 
production. The "trusts," with the rea- 
sonable purpose of making all the profit they 
can, keep down expenses to the lowest limit 
consistent with efficient management, and 
close factories wherever factories are deemed 
unnecessary. They are able to apply all 
the power and energy of concentrated capi- 
tal, directed by individual ability, and the 
best services that wealth can command. 



World's History. 191 

Legislation has been enacted to suppress 
''trusts," but such legislation being repug- 
nant to free institutions and to individual 
rights, is of no effect in practice. 

It is obviously as fair, from a moral 
and common-sense standpoint, for an indi- 
vidual to put his capital into a "trust" as 
to put it into any other form of investment, 
and to deny him that right is to abridge his 
freedom as a citizen. The "trust" may be 
dangerous, but it is logical. It is the com- 
mercial energy of the age carried to an ex- 
treme. 

The "trusts," however, are blazing the 
way to State socialism. The people are 
instinctively opposed to the ' ' trust' ' system, 
and it seems plain enough that the people 
will eventually conclude that if all the bus- 
iness of the country in certain important 
lines is to be concentrated in a few hands, 
if individualism and competition are to dis- 
appear, the people might as well form a 
"trust" of their own, and apply to the gen- 
eral uses the profits which now go to swell 
enormous fortunes. I am not suggesting 
this result as one to be approved. I am an 
advocate of individualism, and have always 
been opposed to socialism, but now that in- 
dividualism is disappearing under the pres- 
sure of concentrated capital, and of the 
Titanic tools which invention has placed at 
the command of capital, it seems to me 



192 Turning Points in the 

inevitable that the people will ultimately 
prefer State socialism to an oligarchy of 
"trusts," competition, the most powerful 
bulwark against State socialism, having 
been effaced by the "trusts" themselves. 

The cry for municipal ownership is simply 
the beginning of State socialism. It is al- 
ready a strong movement, and gaining in 
strength, and the indications are that the 
twentieth century will dawn upon the Amer- 
ican people entering upon this new struggle 
— this probably final phase of the industrial 
revolution. 




World's History. 193 

XVII.— TEN MILITARY AND NAVAL 

TURNING POINTS. 

EUROPE. 

DESTRUCTION OF THE SPANISH ARMADA. 

"The Invincible Armada" — what 
thoughts crowd upon us at that name of 
England's later vikings, Sir Francis Drake, 
Sir John Hawkins, Sir Martin Frobisher 
and the rest, who returned from the ex- 
ploration of unknown seas and continents 
to do brave battle in defence of England's 
homes and England's faith and liberties! 

Philip II., the most powerful monarch of 
his time, had decreed that England should 
be subdued and the Protestant religion ex- 
tinguished, and the wealth and valor and 
pride of Spain were gathered to do his bid- 
ding. With England at his feet the Dutch 
insurgents could not long hold out, and all 
of Europe, from the Baltic to the Adriatic, 
would be ready to do his bidding. France 
was too weak for rivalry ; the dry bones of 
Germany had not been evoked to life by the 
summons of a Vasa or a Frederick. Philip 
was master of the New World, and resolved 
to dominate the Old. Even the Sultan 
bowed to his will. England's queen alone, 
among the leading rulers of Europe, scorned 
13 



194 Turning Points in the 

to truckle to the Spaniard, and held aloft 
the standard of Protestantism. 

The Spanish fleet consisted of one hun- 
dred and thirty vessels, of greater size than 
any seen up to that time in Europe. Italy, 
Portugal and the isles of the Levant con- 
tributed to swell the armament, which car- 
ried 20,000 soldiers, and was prepared to 
transport 34,000 more from the Low Coun- 
tries to invade England. The Spanish 
vessels resembled castles in their height 
and hugeness, but their very superiority of 
size made them unwieldy, and easy prey 
for the lighter vessels of the English. 
"They contained within them," we are 
told, "chambers, chapels, turrets and other 
commodities of great houses. ' ' Their 
pieces of brazen ordnance were 1600, and of 
yron a 1000. The bullets thereto belong- 
ing were 120,000. Moreover they had 
great stores of cannons, double cannons, 
culverings and field-pieces for land ser- 
vices. ' ' They had an abundant equipment 
for the troops in march after landing, and 
vast quantities of wine, bacon, and other 
food and drink. "To be short, they brought 
all things expedient, either for a fleete by 
sea, or for an armie by land. " " This 
navie was esteemed b}^ the king himselfe to 
contain 32,000 persons, and to cost him 
every day 32,000 ducates. " 

In addition to the Armada, the Duke of 



World's History. 195 

Parma collected a vast flotilla and a squad- 
ron of warships at Dunkirk, to transport 
his army to England, where, under the pro- 
tection of the Armada the troops were to be 
landed which were to bring that country 
under the yoke of Spain. 

The English fleet consisted chiefly of 
merchant vessels gathered from all the 
ports of the kingdom, while in every part 
of the country the people armed themselves, 
and prepared by drilling and soldierly ex- 
ercises to resist the invaders. The ships of 
the royal navy numbered thirty-six, but the 
total number of vessels collected to defend 
the realm was 191, with 17,472 seamen. 
The Hollanders came to the assistance of 
the English with three-score sail, "brave 
ships of war. ' ' Scotland, sore on account 
of the recent execution of Queen Mary, re- 
mained neutral and divided in sympathy, 
although it was a Scottish mariner named 
Fleming that gave notice to High Admiral 
Lord Howard, of the approach of the Ar- 
mada. 

The Armada lay off Calais, the largest 
ships ranged outside, when the English be- 
gan the attack, on the night of the twenty- 
ninth of July, 1588. Eight fire-ships were 
sent among the Spaniards, causing great 
confusion, and forcing the Spanish admiral 
to put to sea. When morning broke the 
Spaniards ranged themselves near Grave- 



196 Turning Points in the 

lines. Here the English, with Drake and 
Fenner in the lead, made a daring and de- 
cisive attack on their foes. Says a writer 
of that day : 

"Upon the 29 of July in the morning, 
the Spanish fleet after the forsayd tumult, 
having arranged themselues againe into 
order, were, within sight of Greveling, 
most bravely and furiously encountered by 
the English, where they once again got the 
wind of the Spaniards, who suffered them- 
selues to be deprived of the commodity of 
the place in Caleis Road, and of the ad- 
vantage of the wind neer unto Dunkerk, 
rather than they would change their array 
or separate their forces now conjoyned and 
united together standing only upon their 
defense. 

1 ' And albeit there were many excellent 
and warlike shippes in the English fleet, yet 
scarce were there 22 or 23 among them all, 
which matched 90 of the Spanish shippes in 
the bigness, or could conveniently assault 
them. Wherefore the English shippes 
using their prerogative of nimble steerage, 
whereby they could turn and wield them- 
selues with the wind which way they listed, 
came often times very near upon the Span- 
iards, and charged them so sore, that now 
and then they were but a pike's length 
asunder ; and so continually giving them 
one broad side after another, they dis- 



World's History. 197 

charged all their shot, both great and small, 
upon them, spending one whole day, from 
morning till night, in that violent kind of 
conflict, untill such time as powder and 
bullets failed them. In regard of which 
want they thought it convenient not to pur- 
sue the Spaniards any longer, because they 
had many great vantages of the English, 
namely, for the extraordinary bigness of 
their shippes, and also for that they were so 
neerely conjoyned, and kept together in so 
good array, that they could by no meanes 
be foUgt withall one to one. The English 
thought, therefore, that they had right 
well acquitted themselues in chasing the 
Spaniards first from Caleis, and then from 
Dunkerk, and by that means to have hin- 
dered them from joyning with the Duke of 
Parma his forces, and getting the wind of 
them, to have driven them from their own 
coasts. 

"The Spaniards that day sustained great 
loss and damage, having many of their 
shippes shot thorow and thorow, and they 
discharged likewise great store of ordnance 
against the English, who, indeed, sustained 
some hinderance, but not comparable to the 
Spaniard's loss; for they lost not any one 
ship or person of account; for very diligent 
inquisition being made, the Englishmen all 
that time wherein the Spanish navy sayled 
upon their seas, are not found to haue 



198 Turning Points in the 

wanted aboue one hundred of their people ; 
albeit Sir Francis Drake's ship was pierced 
with shot aboue forty times, and his very 
cabben was twice shot thorow, and about 
the conclusion of the fight, the bed of a cer- 
taine gentleman lying weary thereupon, 
was taken quite from under him with the 
force of a bullet. Likewise, as the Earle 
of Northumberland and Sir Charles Blunt 
were at dinner upon a time, the bullet of a 
demy-culvering brake thorow the middest 
of their cabben, touched their feet, and 
strooke downe two of the standers-by, with 
many such accidents befalling the English 
shippes, which it were tedious to rehearse." 
The remainder of the defeated Armada, 
wrote Vice- Admiral Drake, "driven with 
squibs from their anchors, were chased out 
of the sight of England, round about Scot- 
land and Ireland ; where, for the sympathy 
of their religion, hoping to find succor and 
assistance, a great part of them were crushed 
against the rocks, and those others that 
landed, being very many in number, were, 
notwithstanding, broken, slain, and taken, 
and so sent from village to village, coupled 
in halters to be shipped into England, 
where her majesty, of her princely and in- 
vincible disposition, disdaining to put them 
to death, and scorning either to retain or 
to entertain them, they were all sent back 
again to their countries, to witness and 



World's History. 199 

recount the worthy achievement of their in- 
vincible and dreadful navy. Of which the 
number of soldiers, the fearful burden of 
their ships, the commanders' names of 
every squadron, with all others, their mag- 
azines of provision, were put in print, as 
an army and navy irresistible and disdain- 
ing prevention ; with all which their great 
and terrible ostentation, they did not in all 
their sailing round about England so much 
as sink or take one ship, barque, pinnace, 
or cock-boat of ours, or even burn so much 
as one sheep-cote on this land. ' ' 

Of the Spaniards wrecked on the Irish 
coast one has handed down a vivid descrip- 
tion of his lamentable treatment by those 
whom he calls ''savages." In Scotland 
the Catholic nobles used their influence in 
behalf of the fugitives, and secured the safe 
return of some of them to their native land, 
instead of being delivered up to the Eng- 
lish. The power of Spain was thoroughly 
humbled, and English adventurers every- 
where preyed on her merchantmen and her 
colonies. English maritime supremac}^ had 
its origin in the defeat of the Spanish Ar- 
mada. The friends of the Reformation 
everywhere were encouraged to stand firmly 
for the faith that was in them, and the 
Dutch were animated also in their glorious 
struggle for liberty. 



200 Turning Points in the 

PULTOWA. 

The Swedish empire, founded by Gus- 
tavus Vasa, and extended by his successors 
over a considerable portion of Europe below 
the Baltic, was difficult to maintain, and 
impossible to perpetuate. The Swedes 
themselves were too few in number to act 
the part of Romans in vast and subject 
provinces, separated by a wide sea from the 
ruling power, and bordered by jealous, 
hostile and aggressive States. It is one of 
the plainest lessons of history that con- 
tiguous extension is the only extension of 
empire likel}^ to prove lasting and secure. 
The annexed provinces grow attached by 
degrees to their new masters, and distinc- 
tions of nationality are gradually effaced 
and ancient prejudices forgotten. Thus 
rival kingdoms of the Spanish peninsula 
were merged in one Spanish monarchy com- 
manding the allegiance alike of Castilian 
and Andalusian. Thus England, Wales and 
Scotland became one people, to the common 
advantage of all. Thus the name of Prus- 
sia has become in effect synonymous with 
that of Germany, or at least of Northern 
Germany. Thus Russia has spread from 
the Niemen to the Amoor, and even Aus- 
tria has held together for centuries its 
strange mosaic of discordant races. 



World's History. 201 

England, on the other hand, long ago 
lost her French dominions, on whose con- 
quest and defence so much of English treas- 
ure and blood were expended. Spain found 
the Low Countries only a grave for her 
armies, and Sweden sacrificed peace and 
wealth, and the flower of her manhood in a 
vain effort to keep Germany and Prussia 
and Poland at her feet. 

The ideal, the heroic period of Sweden's 
military power was when Gustavus Adol- 
phus championed the cause of the suffering 
Protestants of Germany, and gave up his 
life on the field of IyUtzen in battling for 
the reformed religion. Germany has never 
forgotten the great commander who swept 
down from the North on the hordes of Wal- 
lenstein, and died in the hour of victory. 
Lutzen saved Northern Germany to the 
Reformation, as the defeat of the Spanish 
Armada saved England. 

"God is my cuirass," said Gustavus 
Adolphus on the morning of the battle, 
when his generals urged him to put on 
armor. At the head of his army he led the 
charge. The imperial troops fought reso- 
lutely, desperately. Sometimes it seemed 
that the Swedes and their allies would be 
overwhelmed, but Gustavus, always in the 
thick of the fight, gaye invincible ardor to 
his followers. Suddenly, in the height of 
the conflict, as yet undecided, the Swedish 



202 Turning Points in the 

king falls, and his riderless horse dashes 
back into the ranks of the Norsemen. 

Not consternation, but a terrible, irre- 
sistible determination to save the body of 
their beloved leader possessed every Swede 
in that host. With a furious courage that 
mercenaries could never know, the children 
of the Vikings swept upon their foes. The 
host of Wallenstein wavered, then fell back 
before the almost supernatural onset. The 
body of the king was rescued, but not be- 
fore it had been cruelly disfigured with 
wounds and plundered by the savage Croats. 
Ten thousand dead and wounded lay on the 
field, and the artillery of the imperialists 
fell into the hands of the Swedes and their 
allies. 

Gustavus Adolphus was dead, but able 
statesmen and gallant soldiers upheld the 
standard which he had raised, and bore it 
even to the gates of Vienna. The Peace of 
Westphalia in 1648, sixteen years after 
Lutzen, forbade religious persecution, and 
laid the foundations of modern Germany. 
****** 

The battle of Pultowa, about fifty years 
after the Peace of Westphalia, brought 
down the always fragile fabric of Swedish 
empire on the mainland of Europe, and 
established the power of the Czars. Charles 
XII., of Sweden, has been called the Mad- 
man of the North, but if he had succeded at 



World's History. 203 

Pultowa he would not have been called a 
madman, and there was even more excuse 
for his invasion of Russia than for the sub- 
sequent enterprise of Napoleon, who had 
the experience of Charles XII. as a warn- 
ing. Charles was one of the great com- 
manders of his age, and of all ages. He 
had military genius of the highest order; 
he loved war; it was his element, and the 
completion of one conquest only inspired 
him to think of another. He was dictator 
of Europe from the Rhine to the Vistula, 
with a splendidly equipped army, a country 
proud of his conquests, and not yet impov- 
erished by his losses, and was courted and 
feared by every ruler, from Queen Anne to 
Peter the Czar, when he resolved to invade 
Muscovy, and dictate terms to the House of 
Romanoff. Charles was probably actuated 
in a large degree by desire to punish Peter 
for his share in the coalition of 1698 against 
the Swedes, and especially his hypocritical 
expressions of goodwill while preparing to 
rob Sweden of its Baltic possessions. Charles 
would never forgive duplicity. It is cer- 
tain, whatsoever the underlying motive, 
that Charles XII. designed to conquer Rus- 
sia, as he had conquered Poland. There 
was good reason for his expectation of 
victory, for he had never failed to defeat 
the Russians easily in all previous encoun- 
ters. 



204 Turning Points in the 

King Charles set out from his camp at 
Aldstadt, near Leipsic, in September, 1707, 
at the head of 45,000 men, and traversed 
Poland; 20,000 men, under Count Lewen- 
haupt, disembarked at Riga and 15,000 
were in Finland. "He was therefore in 
condition to have brought together 80,000 
of the best troops in the world. He left 
10,000 men at Warsaw to guard King Stan- 
islaus, and in January, 1708, arrived at 
Grodno, where he wintered. In June, he 
crossed the forest of Minsk, and presented 
himself before Borisov; forced the Russian 
army, which occupied the left bank of the 
Beresina; defeated 20,000 Russians who 
were strongly intrenched behind marshes; 
passed the Borysthenes at Mohilov, and 
vanquished a corps of 16,000 Muscovites 
near Smolensko on the 22d of September. 
He was now advanced to the confines of 
Lithuania, and was about to enter Russia 
proper; the Czar, alarmed at his approach, 
made him proposals of peace. Up to this 
time all his movements were conformable to 
rule, and his communications were well 
secured. He was master of Poland and 
Riga, and only ten days' march distant from 
Moscow ; and it is probable that he would 
have reached that capital, had he not 
quitted the high road thither, and directed 
his steps toward the Ukraine, in order to 
form a junction with Mazeppa, who brought 



World' s History. 205 

him only 6000 men. By this movement, 
his line of operations, beginning at Sweden, 
exposed his flank to Russia for a distance 
of four hundred leagues, and he was unable 
to protect it, or to receive either reinforce- 
ments or assistance. "* 

The Czar had collected an army of about 
100,000 effective men; and though the 
Swedes, in the beginning of the invasion, 
were successful in every encounter, the 
Russian troops were gradually acquiring 
discipline ; and Peter and his officers were 
learning generalship from their victors, as 
the Thebans of old learned it from the 
Spartans. When Lewenhaupt, in the Oc- 
tober of 1708, was striving to join Charles 
in the Ukraine, the Czar suddenly attacked 
him near the Borysthenes with an over- 
whelming force of 50,000 Russians. Lew- 
enhaupt fought bravely for three days, 
and succeeded in cutting his way through 
the enemy with about 4000 of his men to 
where Charles awaited him near the River 
Desna; but upwards of 8000 Swedes fell in 
these battles; Lewenhaupt's cannon and 
ammunition were abandoned; and the 
whole of his important convoy of provisions, 
on which Charles and his half-starved 
troops were relying, fell into the enemy's 
hands. Charles was compelled to remain 

* "Napoleon the Great on Charles XII." 



206 Turning Points in the 

in the Ukraine during the winter \ but in 
the spring of 1709 he moved forward toward 
Moscow, and invested the fortified town of 
Pultowa, on the River Vorskla; a place 
where the Czar had stored up large supplies 
of provisions and military stores, and which 
commanded the passes leading toward Mos- 
cow. The possession of this place would 
have given Charles the means of supplying 
all the wants of his suffering army, and 
would also have furnished him with a secure 
base of operations for his advance against 
the Muscovite capital. The siege was there- 
fore hotly pressed by the Swedes ; the gar- 
rison resisted obstinately; and the Czar, 
feeling the importance of saving the town, 
advanced in June to its relief, at the head 
of an army from fifty to sixty thousand 
strong. * 

Both sovereigns now prepared for the 
general action, which each saw to be in- 
evitable, and which each felt would be de- 
cisive of his own and of his country's 
destiny. The Czar, by some masterly 
manoeuvres, crossed the Vorskla, and posted 
his army on the same side of that river 
with the besiegers, but a little higher up. 
The Vorskla falls into the Borysthenes 
about fifteen leagues below Pultowa, and 
the Czar arranged his forces in two lines, 



*"Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles. 



World's History. 207 

stretching from one river toward the other, 
so that if the Swedes attacked him and were 
repulsed, they would be driven backward 
into the acute angle formed by the two 
streams at their junction. He fortified 
these lines with several redoubts, lined 
with heavy artillery ; and his troops, both 
horse and foot, were in the best possible 
condition, and amply provided with stores 
and ammunition. Charles' forces were 
about 24,000 strong. But no more than 
half of these were Swedes; so much had 
battle, famine, fatigue and the deadly frosts 
of Russia thinned the gallant bands which 
the Swedish king and Lewenhaupt had led 
to the Ukraine. The other 12,000 men, 
under Charles, were Cossacks and Wallach- 
ians, who had joined him in the country. 
On hearing that the Czar was about to 
attack him, he deemed that his dignity re- 
quired that he himself should be the assail- 
ant; and, leading his army out of their 
intrenched lines before the town, he ad- 
vanced with them against the Russian re- 
doubts. 

He had been severely wounded in the 
foot in a skirmish a few days before, and 
was borne in a litter along the ranks into 
the thick of the fight. Notwithstanding 
the fearful disparity of numbers and dis- 
advantage of position, the Swedes never 
showed their ancient valor more nobly than 



208 Turning Points in the 

on that dreadful day. Nor do their Cos- 
sack and Wallachian allies seem to have 
been unworthy of fighting side by side with 
Charles' veterans. Two of the Russian 
redoubts were actually entered, and the 
Swedish infantry began to raise the cry of 
victory. But, on the other side, neither 
general nor soldiers flinched in their duty. 
The Russian cannonade and musketry were 
kept up; fresh masses of defenders were 
poured into the fortifications, and at length 
the exhausted remnants of the Swedish 
columns recoiled from the blood-stained 
redoubts. Then the Czar led the infantry 
and cavalry of his first line outside the 
works, drew them up steadily and skillfully, 
and the action was renewed along the whole 
fronts of the two armies on the open ground. 
Each sovereign exposed his life freely in 
the world-winning battle, and on each side 
the troops fought obstinately and eagerly 
under their ruler's eyes. It was not till 
two hours from the commencement of the 
action that, overpowered by numbers, the 
hitherto invincible Swedes gave way. All 
was then hopeless disorder and irreparable 
rout. Driven downward to where the rivers 
join, the fugitive Swedes surrendered to 
their victorious pursuers, or perished in the 
waters of the Borysthenes. Only a few 
hundreds swam that river with their king 
and the Cossack Mazeppa, and escaped 



World's History. 209 

into the Turkish territory. Nearty 10,000 
lay killed and wounded in the redoubts and 
on the field of battle. 

Sweden never recovered from the blow 
inflicted at Pultowa, and has never since 
held rank as a first-class power. Her Bal- 
tic provinces fell to Russia, and other an- 
tagonists took advantage of Sweden's 
weakness to share in the spoliation. Sweden 
was helpless, for about one-fourth of the 
male population had perished in the wars, 
and old men and boys alone remained in 
some of the provinces to cultivate the soil. 
Russia, on the other hand, went steadily 
forward in her course of aggrandizement, 
having disposed of the only enemy she 
feared. 

WATERLOO. 

The downfall of Napoleon the Great 
really dates from the burning of Moscow. 
The destruction of the grand army which 
he had led into Russia deprived him of the 
veterans of Austerlitz and Jena, and left 
him to fight with conscript regiments 
against allied Europe, bent on his over- 
throw, and pledged not to lay down arms 
until success had been achieved. The 
young French soldiers fought, it is said, 
like veterans, but they had opposed to them 
enemies who felt that Napoleon was no 
longer invincible, and that his star of em- 
14 



210 Turning Points in the 

pire was on the wane. Between Moscow 
and Elba Napoleon achieved some victories 
worthy of his fame, but he could not regain 
his old ascendency because he no longer 
had the resources for war. France was 
exhausted; her best soldiers had perished, 
and her homes no longer yielded a suffi- 
ciency of recruits for the battlefield. Na- 
poleon did not capitulate, however, until 
his cause was utterly hopeless, and his cap- 
ital was in the hands of the enemy. 

The Bourbons were responsible for the 
Hundred Days. Neither guillotine nor 
exile could teach a Bourbon that the world 
was moving, and that the France which had 
witnessed the Revolution and the Empire 
was not the France of Louis XV. The 
people, it is true, were no longer offended 
by the gross excesses of Versailles and the 
Trianon, but Louis XVIII. was a Bourbon 
in every fibre. Every day of his reign was 
an argument by contrast in favor of the 
past with its glories and its sacrifices — and 
what will Frenchmen not sacrifice for glory ? 
The very faults of the absent emperor seemed 
brilliant compared with the stolid and worth- 
less respectability of a king who ruled only 
by virtue of bayonets steeped in the blood 
of France. The French people keenly felt 
their degrading position under a sovereign 
who was the protege of the very nations 
whom French arms had humbled at Auster- 



World's History. 211 

litz, Jena and Friedland. It was a relief to 
turn their eyes and thoughts to Elba, where 
sat the idol and the hero of their race. 

Napoleon's return found the French peo- 
ple ripe for revolt from their emigre king. 
The empire was restored far more quickly 
than it had been overturned, and Napoleon 
never showed his wonderful genius more 
signally than in the speed and thoroughness 
with which he prepared the country to 
resist the hostile armies which poured to- 
ward the frontier with Paris as their goal. 
Could he have called to life the dry bones 
of that multitude that had followed him to 
Russia, of the thousands who had fallen in 
Germany, on the plains of Lombardy and 
the hills of Spain, embattled Europe might 
have met more than its match on the Rhine 
and in Belgium. But the dead of the 
Grand Armee could answer the trump no 
more. The memory of their loyalty, their 
courage and their sufferings remained a 
precious legacy to France, but the once in- 
vincible battalions would never again align 
for the charge under the eye of their adored 
commander. The Old Guard survived, a 
remnant of the past; but only a remnant. 

Napoleon, however, succeeded in gather- 
ing an army of about 120,000 men, with a 
formidable array of artillery, and about 
25,000 excellent cavalry. "The whole 
army was full of ardor, ' ' says Count Eabe- 



212 Turning Points in the 

doyere, "but the emperor, more a slave than 
could have been credited to recollections and 
old habits, committed the great fault of re- 
placing his army under the command of its 
former chiefs, most of whom, notwithstand- 
ing their previous addresses to the king, 
did not cease to pray for the triumph of the 
imperial cause; yet were not disposed to 
serve it with that ardor and devotion de- 
manded by imperious circumstances. They 
were no longer men full of youth and am- 
bition, generously prodigal of their lives to 
acquire rank and fame ; but veterans weary 
of warfare, who, having attained the sum- 
mit of promotion, and being enriched by 
the spoils of the enemy, or the bounty of 
Napoleon, indulged no other wish than the 
peaceable enjoyment of their good fortune 
under the shade of those laurels they had so 
dearly acquired." The emperor was 
solemnly warned by Marshal Soult, in be- 
half of a convention of general officers, 
against the bestowal on Grouchy of the 
command of the corps which was to consti- 
tute the right flank of Napoleon's army. 
The emperor did not act on the warning, 
and Grouchy 's failure to support him at 
Waterloo fully justified the misgivings to 
which Soult had given expression. 

Marshal Blucher had about 116,000 Prus- 
sians in Belgium, and the Duke of Welling- 
ton commanded about 100,000 men, of 



World' s History. 213 

whom but a small proportion were British. 
Napoleon resolved to take his enemies in 
detail. He defeated the Prussians at Ligny, 
June 16, 18 1 5, but it was not a crushing 
defeat. Blucher quickly recovered from 
the blow, and, reinforced by troops that had 
not been in the battle, he was prepared to 
give timely aid to Wellington at Waterloo. 
Grouchy, detached with 30,000 men by Na- 
poleon to keep the Prussians in check, 
failed in that object, not through treachery, 
but incapacity, and spent the remainder of 
his life explaining why he failed. 

The French army at Waterloo amounted 
to 72,000 men, including about 16,000 cav- 
alry. This did not include the corps under 
Grouchy, which was detached to observe 
the Prussians at Wavre. The French artil- 
lery numbered 210 pieces. The French in- 
fantry was largely composed of ! 'small young 
men," showing the exhaustion to which 
incessant conscription had reduced their 
country. The "Old Guard" were of good 
physique, and all the French fought well. 

The Duke of Wellington had under his 
command 50,300 infantry, 6950 cavalry and 
120 guns. Of the infantry only 17,500 
were British, the total effective force of in- 
fantry being as follows: British, 17,500; 
German Legion, 5600; Nassau, 2400; 
Brunswick, 6400; total, 31,900. 

The remainder, composed of Dutch Line 



214 Turning Points hi the 

regiments, Pay Bas Line regiments and 
Dutch militia, were worse than worthless, 
partly owing to cowardice, and largely, no 
doubt, to lukewarmness, and secret good- 
will toward Napoleon. "They (the Bel- 
gians) certainly did not behave well," says 
Lieutenant-Colonel Tomkinson in his 
Diary, "and though placed in the second 
line, and in many instances under cover of 
the hill, it was difficult to keep them even 
in that position. When a man was wounded 
two or three went away with him to the 
rear. They took great care of their com- 
rades in going off the field, and then com- 
menced plundering in the rear. ' ' . 
"There was a regiment of the Pay Bas in 
square. They were not engaged, nor suf- 
fering much from fire, I may say, not in 
the least cut up whilst I saw them. They 
were immediately in our front, and fancying 
the affair rather serious, and that if the 
enemy advanced an}^ faster (as their fears 
apprehended) they would have to oppose 
them, they began firing their muskets in 
the air, and their rear moved a little, in- 
tending under the confusion of their fire 
and smoke to move off. Major Childers, 
Eleventh Light Dragoons, and I rode up to 
them, encouraged them, stopped those who 
had moved the farthest (ten yards perhaps) 
out of their ranks, and whilst they were 
hesitating whether to retreat or continue 



World's History. 215 

with their column the Duke rode up and en- 
couraged them. He said to us, 'That is 
right, that is right; keep them up.' Chil- 
ders then brought up his squadron, and by- 
placing it in their rear, they continued 
steady. Had this one battalion run away 
at that moment the consequences might 
have been fatal." This extraordinary in- 
cident is in itself enough to show the worse 
than worthless character of the Dutch and 
Belgian troops at Waterloo. They num- 
bered 18,400 men, and can be counted out 
altogether as part of the British strength on 
that day, leaving 31,900 British and Ger- 
man infantry and 6950 British and German 
cavalry, and 5645 artillerymen, with 156 
guns, to oppose Napoleon's army of 48,950 
infantry, 15,765 cavalry, 7232 artillerymen 
and 246 guns. All of Napoleon's troops 
were animated by one national spirit, they 
had the bravery common to Frenchmen, 
and many of them were veterans of his 
former wars. 

The morning of June 18 followed a night 
of unceasing rain. The British had no 
tents, and neither officers nor men had a dry 
garment left to them. Most of them had 
passed the night without even a fire, and 
attempts to dry clothing in the morning 
were made vain by occasional showers. It 
was a gloomy sky that lowered over the 
most fateful battlefield of history. "Per- 



216 Turning Points in the 

haps those," says Creas}^, "who have not 
seen the field of battle at Waterloo, or the 
admirable model of the ground and of the 
conflicting armies which was executed by 
Captain Siborne, may gain a generally ac- 
curate idea of the localities by picturing to 
themselves a valley, between two or three 
miles long, of various breadths at different 
points, but generally not exceeding half a 
mile. On each side of the valley there is a 
winding chain of low hills, running some- 
what parallel with each other. The declivity 
from each of these ranges of hills to the in- 
tervening valley is gentle but not uniform, 
the undulations of the ground being fre- 
quent and considerable. The English 
army was posted on the northern, and the 
French army occupied the southern ridge. 
The artillery of each side thundered at the 
other from their respective heights through- 
out the day, and the charges of horse and 
foot were made across the valley that has 
been described. The village of Mont St. 
Jean is situate a little behind the centre of 
the northern chain of hills, and the village 
of La Belle Alliance is close behind the 
centre of the southern ridge. The high 
road from Charleroi to Brussels runs through 
both these villages, and bisects, therefore, 
both the English and the French positions. 
The line of this road was the line of Na- 
poleon's intended advance on Brussels. 



World' s History. 2 1 7 

"The strength of the British position did 
not consist merely in the occupation of a 
ridge of high ground. A village and ravine, 
called Merk Braine, on the Duke of Welling- 
ton's extreme right, secured him from his 
flank being turned on that side; and on his 
extreme left, two little hamlets, called La 
Haye and Papillote, gave a similar though 
a slighter protection. It was, however, less 
necessary to provide for this extremity of 
the position, as it was on this (the eastern) 
side that the Prussians were coming up. 
Behind the whole British position is the 
great and extensive forest of Soignies. As 
no attempt was made by the French to turn 
either of the English flanks, and the battle 
was a day of straightforward fighting, it is 
chiefly important to see what posts there 
were in front of the British line of hills of 
which advantage could be taken either to 
repel or facilitate an attack ; and it will be 
seen that there were two, and that each was 
of very great importance in the action. In 
front of the British right, that is to say, on 
the northern slope of the valley toward its 
western end, there stood an old-fashioned 
Flemish farmhouse called Goumont or 
Hougoumont, with out-buildings and a gar- 
den, and with a copse of beech-trees of 
about two acres in extent around it. This 
was strongly garrisoned by the allied troops ; 
and while it was in their possession, it was 



218 Turning Points in the 

difficult for the enemy to press on and force 
the British right wing. On the other hand, 
if the enemy could occupy it, it would be 
difficult for that wing to keep its ground on 
the heights with a strong post held ad- 
versely in its immediate front, being one 
that would give much shelter to the enemy's 
marksmen, and great facilities for the sud- 
den concentration of attacking columns. 
Almost immediately in front of the British 
centre, and not so far down the slope as 
Hougoumont, there was another farmhouse, 
of a smaller size, called L,a Haye Sainte, 
which was also held by the British troops, 
and the occupation of which was found to 
be of very serious consequence. 

"With respect to the French position, the 
principal feature to be noticed is the village 
of Planchenoit, which lay a little in the rear 
of their right (i. e., on the eastern side), 
and which proved to be of great importance 
in aiding them to check the advance of the 
Prussians, The Prussians, on the morning 
of the 1 8th, were at Wavre, about twelve 
miles to the east of the field of battle at 
Waterloo. The junction of Bulow's divi- 
sion had more than made up for the loss 
sustained at Ligny; and leaving Thielman, 
with about 17,000 men, to hold his ground 
as he best could against the attack which 
Grouchy was about to make on Wavre, 
Bulow and Blucher moved with the rest of 



World' s History . 219 

the Prussians upon Waterloo. It was cal- 
culated that they would be there by three 
o'clock; but the extremely difficult nature 
of the ground which they had to traverse, 
rendered worse by the torrents of rain that 
had just fallen, delayed them long on their 
twelve miles' march. 

"The Duke of Wellington drew up his 
infantry in two lines, the second line being 
composed principally of Dutch and Belgian 
troops, and of those regiments of other 
nations which had suffered most severely at 
Quatre Bras on the 16th. The second line 
was posted on the northern declivity of the 
hills, so as to be sheltered from the French 
cannonade. The cavalry was stationed at 
intervals along the line in the rear, the 
largest force of horse being collected on the 
left of the centre, to the east of the Charleroi 
road. On the opposite heights the French 
army was drawn up in two general lines, 
with the entire force of the Imperial Guards, 
cavalry as well as infantry, in rear of the 
centre, as a reserve. English military 
critics have highly eulogized the admirable 
arrangement which Napoleon made of his 
forces of each arm, so as to give him the 
most ample means of sustaining, by an im- 
mediate and sufficient support, any attack, 
from whatever point he might direct it, and 
of drawing promptly together a strong 
force, to resist any attack that might be 



220 Turning Points in the 

made on himself in any part of the field. 
When his troops were all arra3 r ed, he rode 
along the lines, receiving everywhere the 
most enthusiastic cheers from his men, of 
whose entire devotion to him his assurance 
was now doubly sure. On the southern 
side of the valley the duke's army was also 
arrayed, and ready to meet the menaced 
attack.* 

"It was approaching noon before the 
action commenced. Napoleon, in his 
memoirs, gives as the reason for this delay, 
the miry state of the ground through the 
heavy rain of the preceding night and day, 
which rendered it impossible for cavalry or 
artillery to manoeuvre on it till a few hours 
of dry weather had given it its natural con- 
sistency. It has been supposed, also, that 
he trusted to the effect which the sight of 
the imposing array of his own forces was 
likely to produce on the part of the allied 
army. The Belgian regiments had been 
tampered with; and Napoleon had well- 
founded hopes of seeing them quit the Duke 
of Wellington in a body, and range them- 
selves under his own eagles. The duke, 
however, who knew and did not trust them, 
had guarded against the risk of this by 
breaking up the corps of Belgians, and dis- 
tributing them in separate regiments among 
troops on whom he could rely. 

*Siborne, quoted by Creasy. 



World s History. 221 

' 'At last, at about half-past eleven o'clock, 
Napoleon began the battle by directing a 
powerful force from his left wing under his 
brother, Prince Jerome, to attack Hougou- 
mont. Column after column of the French 
now descended from the west of the southern 
heights, and assailed that post with fiery 
valor, which was encountered with the most 
determined bravery. The French won the 
copse round the house, but a party of the 
British Guards held the house itself through- 
out the day. Amid shell and shot, and the 
blazing fragments of part of the buildings, 
this obstinate contest was continued. But 
still the English held Hougoumont, though 
the French occasionally moved forward in 
such numbers as enabled them to surround 
and mask this post with part of their troops 
from their left wing, while others pressed 
onward up the slope and assailed the British 
right. 

"The cannonade, which commenced at 
first between the British right and the 
French left, in consequence of the attack on 
Hougoumont, soon became general along 
both lines; and about one o'clock Napo- 
leon directed a grand attack to be made 
under Marshal Ney upon the centre and left 
wing of the allied army. For this purpose 
four columns of infantry, amounting to 
about 18,000 men, were collected, supported 
by a strong division of cavalry under the 



222 Turning Points in the 

celebrated Kellerman, and seventy-four 
guns were brought forward ready to be 
posted on the ridge of a little undulation of 
the ground in the interval between the two 
main ranges of heights, so as to bring their 
fire to bear on the British line at a range of 
about seven hundred yards. 

1 'The columns under Ney descended from 
the French range of hills, and gained the 
ridge of the intervening eminence, on which 
the batteries that supported them were now 
ranged. As the columns descended again 
from this eminence, the seventy-four guns 
opened over their heads with terrible effect 
upon the troops of the allies that were 
stationed on the heights to the left of the 
Charleroi road. One of the French columns 
kept to the east, and attacked the extreme 
left of the allies; the other three continued 
to move rapidly forward upon the left centre 
of the allied position. The front line of the 
allies here was composed of Bylant's brigade 
of Dutch and Belgians. As the French col- 
umns moved up the southward slope of the 
height on which the Dutch and Belgians 
stood, and the skirmishers in advance began 
to open their fire, Bylant's entire brigade 
turned and fled in disgraceful and disorderly 
panic; but there were men more worthy of 
the name behind. 

"The second line of the allies here con- 
sisted of two brigades of English infantry, 



World's History. 223 

which had suffered severely at Quatre Bras. 
But they were under Picton, and not even 
Ney himself surpassed in resolute bravery 
that stern and fiery spirit. Picton brought 
his two brigades forward, side by side, 
in a thin two-deep line. Thus joined 
together, they were not 3,000 strong. 
With these Picton had to make 
head against the three victorious French 
columns, upward of four times that 
strength, and who, encouraged by the 
easy rout of the Dutch and Belgians, now 
came confidently over the ridge of the hill. 
The British infantry stood firm; and as the 
French halted and began to deploy into line, 
Picton seized the critical moment: a close 
and deadly volley was thrown in upon them, 
and then with a fierce hurrah the British 
dashed in with the bayonet. The French 
reeled back in confusion ; and as they stag- 
gered down the hill, a brigade of the Eng- 
lish cavalry rode in on them, cutting them 
down by whole battalions, and taking 2000 
prisoners. The British cavalry galloped 
forward and sabred the artillerymen of 
Ney's seventy-four advanced guns; and 
then cutting the traces and the throats of 
the horses, rendered these guns totally use- 
less to the French throughout the remainder 
of the day." Lieutenant- Colonel Tomkins 
says of this charge: "It was one of the 
finest ever seen. On going over the 



224 Turning Poi?its in the 

ground the following morning I saw where 
two lines of infantry had laid down their 
arms; their position was accurately marked 
from the regularity the muskets were placed 
in. After their success they continued to 
advance, and moved forward in scattered 
parties up to the reserve of the enemy, and 
to the top nearly of the heights held by 
them. In this scattered state they were 
attacked by a heavy brigade of cavalry. 

They were obliged to retreat 

The loss of the second brigade was immense, 
and the more to be regretted, for had they 
halted after completely routing the enemy's 
troops their loss would have been trifling, 
and the brigade remained efficient for the 
rest of the day." In this charge Sir 
Thomas Picton was killed at the head of 
his squadron, and Sir William Ponsonby at 
the head of his brigade. 

The French continued to charge in vain 
the stubborn ranks of the British, and while 
the losses of the latter were terrible, those 
of the French were greater. "Whenever 
the enemy made an attack, ' ' says Lieuten- 
ant-Colonel Tomkinson, "they covered it 
with all the artillery they could thunder at 
us, and we again worked their columns in 
advancing with every gun we could bring 
against them. One brigade of guns was 
firing at a brigade of the enemy's which 
had got their range and annoyed them. 



World's History. 225 

They were ordered by the duke not to fire 
at the enemy's guns, but to direct all shot 
against their columns. We might run a 
chance of losing the position from a severe 
attack of one of their columns, but could 
not by their cannonade. The manner their 
columns were cut up in making the attack 
was extraordinary, and the excellence of 
practice in artillery was never exceeded. 
The enemy fired a great deal, yet at times 
I thought rather wildly. ' ' 

Meantime Napoleon knew that over his 
army hung the dark shadow of the forces 
under Blucher and Bulow. These forces 
attacked the rear of the French right about 
half-past four in the afternoon, but were 
driven back and kept at bay after fierce 
fighting, in which thousands fell. Never- 
theless, they kept a corps of the French 
army engaged; other Prussians were ap- 
proaching, and Napoleon saw that he must 
crush Wellington quickly, or his cause was 
lost. Night was approaching when the 
final charge was made — that charge upon 
the result of which depended the fate of 
Europe. The infantry of the Old Guard 
was formed in two columns, and Ney led 
the advance, while a fearful fire of artillery 
sent shell and round shot and grapeshot 
swept from the French batteries through the 
British and Anglo-German ranks. These 
stood the blast of death with a heroism 
15 



226 Turning Points i?i the 

never surpassed on the battlefield, the Duke 
of Wellington himself being foremost in 
leading and urging his men. For a brief 
time the issue seemed doubtful ; the French 
gained some ground, and thought they were 
dashing on to certain victory, when sud- 
denly, with the enemy within fifty yards, 
the Duke of Wellington called: "Up 
Guards, and at them!" 

Four feet deep uprose the British line, 
and poured a deadly volley into the French. 
Hundreds of Napoleon's veterans fell dead 
and wounded, and the rest were thrown 
into disorder. Volley followed volley, and 
then came the bayonet charge. The 
French fled. Waterloo was won. The 
Prussian share of the battle was that of 
wolves on the wounded lion. Germans did 
glorious work at Waterloo, but they were 
the Germans who served under Wellington. 
The credit of winning the battle of Water- 
loo is due to British pluck and endurance. 
The French found the British very differ- 
ent from the enemies they had been accus- 
tomed to meet. Lieutenant-Colonel Tom- 
kinson says on this subject: "This is the 
system the}- have gone upon with every 
other nation, and have succeeded. They 
move an overawing column or two to one 
point. It comes up with the greatest regu- 
larity, and on arriving at close quarters 
with their opponents thej T carry so steady 



World's History. 227 

and determined an appearance that those 
hitherto opposed to them have generally 
abandoned their positions without being 
beaten out of them." The French found 
that the British were made of sterner stuff, 
as indeed they ought to have known from 
experience in the Peninsula. 

In the battle of Waterloo the troops under 
the Duke of Wellington lost 16, 186 men, and 
the Prussians 6999, making a total loss for 
the allies of 23,185 men. The French lost 
18,500 killed and wounded, and 7800 cap- 
tured. It is worthy of note that the losses 
might have been much heavier but for the 
rain of the previous night. The effect of 
the rain was to make the ground so wet 
that shells often sank into the soil where 
they fell, and did little or no injury, and 
the same was the case with round-shot. 

KONIGGRATZ. 

Koniggratz was made inevitable by the 
growth of the Prussian monarchy, and the 
consequent rivalry between Prussia and 
Austria for predominance in Germany. The 
Schleswig-Holstein difficulty was merely 
the occasion, the incident, the match that 
in the hand of Prince Bismarck lighted 
the fire of war. "One single encounter, 
one decisive battle, ' ' said Bismarck in 1865, 
"and Prussia will have it in her power to 
dictate conditions." The Convention of 



228 Turning Points in the 

Gastein postponed the struggle for a few 
months, although King William of Prussia 
had hoped that it would lead to permanent 
peace. Bismarck knew better. He con- 
tinued his plans for war, and artfully in- 
duced Louis Napoleon to remain passive in 
the approaching conflict by playing upon 
his dream of Italy's liberation — the one 
redeeming feature in Louis Napoleon's 
character and reign. The Schleswig-Hol- 
stein difference was fostered; the relations 
between Prussia and Austria became more 
and more embittered, and at length the two 
powers began advancing troops toward the 
frontier. Italy, too, began to arm as an 
ally of Prussia, and Austria was confronted 
by two enemies instead of one. For Italy 
the Austrians had only contempt, in some 
degree justified by subsequent events, but 
hostilities in the South made more serious 
and difficult the problem in the North. 

Prussia also had foes on her flanks. 
Hanover, Saxony and Hesse-Cassel still 
dared to dispute the supremacy of Berlin, 
and were in avowed sympathy with Austria. 
Bismarck did not hesitate in dealing with 
these lesser antagonists. Prussian troops 
occupied the capitals of the States named, 
and started in pursuit of their armies. The 
Hanoverians fought gallantly at Laugen- 
salza, but were compelled to surrender to 
King William. The Hessian army has- 



World 's History. 229 

tened to make junction with the "army 
of the South," a Bavarian corps 40,000 
strong, and another corps of 46,000 drawn 
from Wurtemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt 
and Nassau. These troops, poorly organ- 
ized, and ill-prepared to meet the thor- 
oughly trained forces of King William, 
were beaten in detail by Generals Vogel von 
Falckenstein and Manteuffel, with numbers 
about half as strong as their opponents. 
The Saxon army of 30, 000 took the only 
effective course by marching into Bohemia 
and joining the Austrians under Benedek. 

King William was in supreme command 
of the Prussian forces, which consisted of 
three separate armies; the first in the cen- 
tre, of about 100,000 men, led by Prince 
Frederick Charles, the king's nephew, and 
called the ' 'Army of Bohemia;" the second, 
on the left, called the "Army of Silesia," 
and numbering 116,000 men, under the 
Crown Prince, afterward Emperor Frederick, 
and the third or "Army of the Elbe," on 
the right, composed of 40,000 men, com- 
manded by Herwarth von Bittenfeld. 

It was the shortest great war in history. 
Although the Austrians had been preparing, 
the Prussians virtually took them by sur- 
prise, and assailed them with far superior 
forces. Battle after battle was won by the 
Prussians, and at length the two great 
armies confronted each other, July 2, 1866, 



230 Turning Points in the 

near the town of Koniggratz. The king 
held a council of war, and it was resolved 
to let the troops rest on the following day, 
and get ready to strike a crushing blow. 
Meantime, however, it was learned that the 
Austrians were arranging to attack, and at 
midnight the old king called another coun- 
cil, and it was determined not to wait for 
the enemy, but to strike at dawn of day. 

Prince Frederick Charles, with his three 
corps, was to assail Benedek with his five 
corps, while Herwarth von Bittenfeld should 
fall upon the left flank of the Austrians, 
and the Crown Prince attack their right. 
When this plan was decided upon the 
Crown Prince was more than twenty miles 
away, and it was four o'clock in the morn- 
ing when the courier arrived at his quarters 
with the order from the king. He pledged 
himself to do his part in the battle, and his 
royal father felt full confidence that the son 
would keep his word. The battle did not 
begin, how r ever, until about eight o'clock, 
when Frederick Charles, amid a pouring 
rain, opened his guns on the Austrians. 

The king, with Bismarck and his staff 
appeared among the troops, and the thun- 
derous cheers which greeted them showed 
the loyal and confident spirit of the soldiers. 
Through long hours of that gloomy day the 
cannon thundered, and the Prussian needle- 
gun sent rapid death among Austria's bat- 



World's History. 231 

talions, but the latter remained unbroken, 
and the struggle so far indecisive, while the 
king and his generals looked anxiously for 
the coming of the Crown Prince. ''Sud- 
denly Bismarck lowered his glass, and drew 
the attention of his neighbors to certain 
lines in the far distance. All telescopes 
were pointed thither, but the lines were 
pronounced to be furrows. ' These are not 
furrows,' said Bismarck, after another 
scrutinizing look; 'the spaces are not 
equal ; they are advancing lines. ' And so 
they were ; and soon thereafter the cannon- 
thunder of 'Unser Fritz,' with the irresis- 
tible rush of the Guards up the heights of 
Chlune and Kosberitz brought relief and 
joy to the minds of all."* 

Attacked now on both flanks, and the 
centre unable to hold its own against re- 
newed and overwhelming assault, the Aus- 
trians gave way, and retreat soon became a 
disordered rout. King William led forward 
the cavalry reserve of the first army, which 
met and scattered the Austrian cavalry re- 
serve. From the opening to the close of 
the battle which he thus brought to a tri- 
umphant ending, King William never 
avoided danger. Shells shrieked by his 
head, men were struck down around him, 
but he remained as exposed and indifferent 

*L,ove's "Prince Bismarck." 



232 Turning Points in the 

to the perils of battle as the bravest of his 
troopers. "To my repeated request," says 
Bismarck, "that His Majesty might not so 
carelessly expose himself to so murderous a 
fire he only answered, 'The commander-in- 
chief must be where he ought to be. ' " 

The number of men engaged at Konig- 
gratz was, according to Captain Otto 
Benndt's recent work on "Warfare in 
Figures," 436,000, of whom about 230,000 
were Prussians. The Austrian force in- 
cluded 30,000 Saxons. The Prussians had 
800 guns and the Austrians nearly the same 
number. The Prussians lost about 10,000 
killed and wounded, and the Austrians 
40,000, of whom 18,000 were prisoners, to- 
gether with 11 standards and 174 guns. 
Even Bismarck was touched by the awful 
spectacle of the battlefield, with its 32,000 
of dead and dying and wounded. "I have 
lost all except, alas, my life," exclaimed 
Marshal Benedek, the Austrian commander. 

Austria, 03' the Treaty of Prague, agreed 
to a Prussian annexation of Schleswig-Hol- 
stein, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel and Nassau, 
and the free city of Frankfort. Bismarck, 
upon an earnest appeal from France, con- 
sented to forego the annexation of Saxony, 
that kingdom agreeing to join the Confed- 
eration of the North. Prussia, without 
Saxony, acquired territories which added 
four and a half millions to her population, 



World's History. 233 

and increased her area by about a fourth of 
its previous extent. Bavaria and Hesse 
were required to pay an indemnity of thirty 
and three millions of gulden respectively, 
and Wurtemberg and Baden were severally 
fined eight and six millions of gulden for 
their share in the hostilities against Prus- 
sia.* These easy terms for the South Ger- 
man States are in part accounted for by 
their agreement to sign secret treaties con- 
ferring the command of their several armies 
on the King of Prussia in the event of a 
foreign attack upon Germany. Bismarck 
also weighed the fact that the annexation 
of the South German States to Prussia 
would bring in an element not easily assim- 
ilated, and likel}' to prove a source of weak- 
ness instead of strength, whereas, permitted 
to retain independence, the South Germans 
would be useful and valuable allies in the 
next movement toward German unification. 
The Treaty of Prague made Austria a 
power alien to Germany, although the 
dominant element in Austria is German. 
From the day of the Koniggratz defeat 
Austria turned her gaze more than ever to- 
ward the Balkans, and she has made up to 
some extent by gains in that direction for 
losses in Germany and Italy. 



*The gulden of the South German States at the time of 
the treaty of Prague was worth about 35 cents. 



234 Turning Points i?i the 

The Italians were rewarded for good in- 
tentions and poor performance by the ces- 
sion of Venetia. Not until 1870, however, 
after Sedan, was the unity of Italy made 
complete by the surrender of Rome. 



SEDAN. 

Prussia did not provoke the Franco-Ger- 
man war, but she was ready for it, and she 
welcomed it. Bismarck had long foreseen 
that only war with France could rivet that 
German unity upon which he had set his 
heart, and to the accomplishment of which 
he devoted his existence. France still 
affected to treat Prussia as an inferior in- 
stead of an equal, and neither France nor 
Germany had forgotten that Ligny was 
the final victory of the First Napoleon, and 
that Prussia had no triumph to her credit 
to offset that memorable defeat. Even the 
success of Prussia in her war with Austria 
had not diminished the arrogance of France, 
although it had made the French emperor 
more cautious for the time being in his 
attitude toward his German neighbors. 

In 1870, Louis Napoleon believed that 
his armies were in a condition to repeat his 
uncle's march to Berlin, but, unlike the 
great Napoleon, he acted on the information 
of others, and was thoroughly deceived. 
He did not have half the force at his com- 



World's History. 235 

mand that he supposed, and when it came 
to actual warfare the Germans were able to 
present two soldiers for every Frenchman 
in the field. The German military system 
was a perfect machine, and its commissariat 
in admirable order; whereas the French 
was dry-rotted with corruption, and inef- 
ficient in every department. But for the 
courage of which the French gave heroic 
illustration amid the most depressing cir- 
cumstances, the French side of the Franco- 
German war would have been the most 
disgraceful exhibition of military incom- 
petency on the part of a great nation within 
the present century. 

War was declared by France July 19, 
1870. Within two weeks Germany had 
over one million of men read} 7 for the con- 
flict, and half a million or more on the 
march for the Rhine. At their head was 
King William, venerable in years but as 
brave and ready for the field as the youngest 
man in his host. With him went Bismarck, 
the statesman, and Von Moltke, the greatest 
warrior of them all, a master of military 
tactics, the Grant and the Lee of Europe. 
"March separately — strike combined" — is 
said to have been Von Moltke's motto, and 
he carried it out thoroughly in the swift 
and terrific campaign of 1870. Moving 
vast armies along separate routes — thus 
facilitating their march, and making their 



236 Turning Points in the 

sustenance the easier, the German com- 
manders always presented a largely superior 
force in actual conflict, and although in 
almost every battle their losses consider- 
ably exceeded those of the French, they 
could readily replenish the vacant ranks, 
and still have the advantage of superior 
numbers. 

The Franco-German war was an advance 
on the part of the Germans from one field 
of slaughter to another. Every stand which 
the French made marked a German victory, 
usually won at a far greater cost of life to 
the victors than to the vanquished. But 
for one German that fell in battle, ten 
poured across the frontier. 

The first serious conflict of the war took 
place on August 4, at Weissenburg, where 
the German advance-guard was attacked by 
the French under General Douay. The 
French commander was killed, and his 
troops driven back in disorder. On August 
6, General Steinmetz, with 120,000 Ger- 
mans, fought a bloody battle at Spicheren 
with 60,000 French, led by General Fros- 
sard. The French were defeated, with a 
loss of about 4000 dead and wounded, and 
2500 prisoners. The German loss in dead 
and wounded was also about 4000. On the 
same day the Crown Prince Frederick de- 
feated MacMahon at Woerth, taking 6000 
prisoners, 6 mitrailleuses and 35 cannon. 



World's History. 237 

Both wings of the French army having met 
with disaster, the original position could no 
longer be held, and the different corps 
gathered into two large masses to retreat 
along the line of the Moselle. Two differ- 
ent armies were thus formed — the Army of 
Metz, commanded by Marshal Bazaine, and 
the Army of Chalons, commanded by Mar- 
shal MacMahon. 

On August 14, the Germans, 80,000 
strong, attacked the French, 60,000 in 
number, near Metz, and after a sanguinary 
struggle, in which the Germans lost be- 
tween 4000 and 5000 killed and wounded, 
the French were compelled to retire into the 
fortifications. On August 16, the battle of 
Mars-la-Tour was fought at which the en- 
tire French army of the Rhine w T as repulsed 
by Prince Frederick Charles, and driven 
back on Gravelotte, the Germans, however, 
suffering immense loss. At Gravelotte, on 
August 18, occurred the greatest battle of 
the war, in which 280,000 Germans were 
arrayed against 160,000 Frenchmen. The 
French army occupied a very strong posi- 
tion to the west of Metz, but after nine 
hours of a fiercely contested conflict, with 
terrible slaughter on both sides, the French 
were completely routed, cut off from their 
communications with Paris and forced back 
toward Metz. The French lost 609 officers 
and 11,605 men; the Germans, 904 officers 



238 Turning Points in the 

and 19,658 men. The French army, under 
Bazaine, was now shut up in the fortress 
of Metz. 

On Tuesday, the 30th of August, the 
army of the Crown Prince overtook Mac- 
Mahon's corps a short distance north of 
Rheims; and after a fierce battle, of enor- 
mous slaughter on each side, the Prussians 
drove the shattered army of the French in 
utter rout towards Sedan. During all the 
hours of the 31st, the battle raged in an 
incessant series of bloody skirmishes, as the 
French troops, about a hundred thousand 
in number, pressed on every side, fell back, 
bleeding, exhausted, despairing, into 
Sedan. 

The dawn of the morning of the 1st of 
September found the French so surrounded 
as to be cut off from all possibility of re- 
treat. They were crowded together in a 
narrow space, while five hundred pieces of 
artillery were opening fire upon them. At 
five o'clock in the morning, the terrific 
storm of battle opened its thunders. It 
was an awful day. In the first hour of the 
battle, General MacMahon was struck by 
the splinter of a shell, and was carried 
back, severely wounded, into Sedan. The 
command passed to General Wimpffen. 
Nearly three hundred thousand men were 
now hurling a storm of bullets, shot and 
shell into the crowded ranks of the French. 



World's History. 239 

It was an indescribable scene of tumult 
and carnage. A correspondent of one of 
the London papers writes: 

"All describe the conduct of the emperor 
as that of one who either cared not for 
death, or actuall} 7 threw himself in its way. 
In the midst of the scene of confusion 
which ensued upon the irruption of the 
panic-stricken French into Sedan, the em- 
peror, riding slowly through a wide street 
swept by the German artillery and choked 
by the disordered soldiery, paused a 
moment to address a question to a colonel 
of his staff. 

"At the same instant a shell exploded a 
few feet in front of Napoleon, leaving him 
unharmed; though it was evident to all 
around that he had escaped by a miracle. 
The emperor continued on his way without 
manifesting the slightest emotion, greeted 
by the enthusiastic vivats of the troops. 
Later, while sitting at a window inditing 
his celebrated letter to the King of Prussia, 
a shell struck the wall just outside, and 
burst only a few feet from the emperor's 
chair, again leaving him unscathed and un- 
moved. " 

For five hours the emperor had been ex- 
posed to a fire which filled the air with 
bullets, ploughed up the ground at his feet, 
and covered the field with the mutilated and 
the dead. At half -past three o'clock in the 



240 Turning Points in the 

afternoon, General Wimpffen sent an officer 
to propose that the emperor should place 
himself in the middle of a column of men 
who should endeavor to cut their way 
through the enemy. The emperor replied 
that he could not consent to save himself at 
the sacrifice of so many men ; that he had 
determined to share the fate of the army. 
Though a large portion of the army was 
still fighting valiantly upon the heights 
around the walls, the streets of Sedan .were 
choked with the debris of all the corps, and 
were fiercely bombarded from all sides. 

After twelve hours of so unequal a con- 
flict, the commanders of the corps d? arrnie 
reported to the emperor that they could no 
longer offer any serious resistance. The 
emperor ordered the white flag to be raised 
upon the citadel, and sent the following 
letter to his Prussian Majesty, who was 
with the conquering army : — 

"Sire, my brother, not having been able 
to die in the midst of my troops, it only re- 
mains for me to place my sword in the 
hands of your Majesty. 

" I am of your Majesty the good brother, 
"Napoleon." 

William immediately replied, "Sire, my 
brother, regretting the circumstances under 
which we meet, I accept this word of your 
Majesty; and I pray you to name one of 
your officers provided with full powers to 



World's History. 241 

treat for the capitulation of the army which 
has so bravely fought under your command. 
On my side, I have named General Moltke 
for this purpose. 

"I am of your Majesty the good brother, 

''William." 

General Wimpffen was sent to the Prus- 
sian headquarters. " Your army," said Gen- 
eral Moltke, "does not number more than 
eighty thousand men. We have two hun- 
dred and thirty thousand, who completely 
surround you. Our artillery is everywhere 
in position, and can destroy the place in 
two hours. You have provisions for only 
one day, and scarcely any more ammuni- 
tion. The prolongation of your defence 
would be only a useless massacre. " 

General Wimpffen returned to Sedan. A 
council of thirty-two generals was called. 
With but two dissentient voices, it was de- 
cided to be useless to sacrifice any more 
lives. The capitulation was signed. 

King William, in a letter which he wrote 
to Queen Augusta, speaks as follows of his 
fallen foes: — 

"You already know, through my three 
telegrams, the extent of the great historical 
event which has just happened. It is like 
a dream, though one has seen it unroll itself 
hour after hour. On the morning of the 
2d I drove to the battlefield, and met Moltke, 

who was coming to obtain my consent to 

16 



242 Turning Points in the 

the capitulation. He told me that the em- 
peror had left Sedan at five o'clock, and 
had come to Donchery. As he wished to 
speak to me, and there was a chateau in 
the neighborhood, I chose this for our meet- 
ing. At one o'clock I started with Fritz, 
escorted by the cavalry staff. I alighted 
before the chateau, where the emperor came 
to meet me. We were both much moved 
at meeting again under such circumstances. 
What my feelings were, considering that I 
had seen Napoleon only three years before 
at the summit of his power, is more than I 
can describe."' 

The illustrious captive was assigned to 
the Castle of Wilhelmshohe, near Cassel, 
one of the most attractive castles in Ger- 
many. Accompanied by his friends, sup- 
plied with every comfort, and surrounded 
by a guard of honor, the chains which held 
the prisoner of war were invisible. 

The tidings of this great calamity soon 
reached Paris, and created intense excite- 
ment. 

The second French empire was at an end, 
and the proclamation of King William of 
Prussia as German emperor, at Versailles, in 
December, 1870, crowned the great task of 
Bismarck's life. In France a real republic 
arose from the ruins of the empire and the 
ashes of the Commune, and the French na- 
tion is now in a more prosperous condition, 



World s s History. 243 

and better provided with all the elements 
that contribute to it, than at any time in 
its past history. 



AMERICA. 

DUQUKSNE. 

The closing years of the seventeenth cen- 
tury witnessed the beginning of the struggle 
between France and England for empire in 
North America. Marquette, Joliet and La 
Salle won for France by daring exploration 
a nominal title to the Mississippi Valley, 
and La Salle assumed possession of the great 
river and its country in the name of Louis 
XIV., after whom he called the region 
Louisiana. It was a vast dominion indeed 
that was thus claimed for the House of 
Bourbon without a settlement and with 
hardly an outpost to make any real show of 
sovereignty. Even had the expulsion of 
James II. from the English throne not 
hastened an outbreak between England and 
France, the conflict would have been in- 
evitable. The war began in 1689, and with 
intervals of peace and sometimes in spite of 
peace the contest continued, until 1763, 
with varying fortunes, but ultimately re- 



244 Turning Points in the 

suiting in the complete overthrow of the 
French. 



The point of land where the Allegheny 
and Monongahela meet in turbulent eddies 
and form the Beautiful River, early engaged 
the attention of the two nations, rivals for 
the dominion of the northern continent, 
while between two of the leading British 
colonies grave difference existed as to own- 
ership of the coveted territory. Pennsyl- 
vania, held in leading strings by a Quaker 
policy which endeavored to reconcile the 
savage realities of an age of iron with the- 
ories of a golden millennium, failed to sus- 
tain her assertion of right with the 
energies that her population and resources 
might well have commanded, and Virginia, 
more ambitious and militant, boldly pushed 
an armed expedition into the very heart of 
the border wilderness, and began with the 
attack on Jumonville and his party the war 
that ended on the Plains of Abraham. 

In 1750 the Ohio Company, formed for 
the purpose of colonizing the country on 
the river of that name, surveyed its banks 
as far as the site of Louisville. The 
French, resolved to defend their title to the 
region west of the mountains, crossed Lake 
Erie, and established posts at Presque Isle, 
at Le Boeuf, and at Venango on the Alle- 



World's History. 245 

gheny River. Governor Dinwiddie, of 
Virginia, sent a messenger to warn the 
French not to advance. He selected for this 
task a young man named George Washing- 
ton, a land surveyor, who, notwithstanding 
his youth, had made a good impression as 
a person of capacity and courage, well-fitted 
for the arduous and delicate undertaking. 
Washington well performed his task, 
although the French, as might have been 
expected, paid no heed to his warning. 
In the spring of 1754, a party of English 
began to build a fort where Pittsburg now 
stands. The French drove them off and 
erected Fort Duquesne. A regiment of 
Virginia troops was already marching to- 
ward the place. Upon the death of its 
leading officer, George Washington, the 
lieutenant-colonel, took command. Wash- 
ington, overwhelmed by the superior 
numbers of the French, was compelled to 
surrender, and the French, for the first time, 
were masters of the Ohio. 

This reverse did not diminish the esteem 
in which Washington was held by the Vir- 
ginians, and by those of the mother coun- 
try who came in contact with him. When 
General Edward Braddock, in 1755, started 
on his ill-fated expedition for the capture 
of Duquesne with a force of about two 
thousand men, including the British regu- 
lars and the colonial militia, Washington 



246 Turning Points in the 

accompanied the British general as one of 
his staff. Braddock was a gallant soldier, 
but imperious and self-willed, and he looked 
almost with contempt upon the American 
troops. He made a forced march with 
twelve hundred men in order to surprise 
the French at Duquesne before they could 
receive reinforcements. Colonel Dunbar 
followed with the remainder of the army 
and the wagon train. 

It was a delightful July morning when 
the British soldiers and colonists crossed a 
ford of the Monongahela, and advanced in 
solid platoons along the southern bank of 
the stream in the direction of the fort. 
Washington advised a disposition of the 
troops more in accordance with forest war- 
fare, but Braddock haughtily rejected the 
advice of the "provincial colonel," as he 
called Washington. The army moved on, 
recrossed the river to the north side, and 
continued the march to Duquesne. The 
news of the British advance had been car- 
ried to the fort by Indian scouts. The 
French at first thought of abandoning the 
post, but they decided to attack the British 
with the aid of Indian allies. De Beaujeu 
led the French and Indians. The British 
were proceeding in fancied security when 
the forest rang w'ith Indian yells, and a 
volley of bullets and flying arrows dealt 
death in their ranks. The regular troops 



World's History. 247 

were thrown into confusion, and Braddock 
tried courageously to rally them. Wash- 
ington showed the admirable qualities 
which afterward made him victor in the 
Revolution. Cool and fearless amid the 
frantic shouts of the foe and the panic of 
the British soldiery, he gave Braddock in- 
valuable assistance in endeavoring to re- 
trieve the fortunes of the day. The pro- 
vincials fought frontier fashion, nearly all 
losing their lives, but not without picking 
off many of their enemies. Beaujeu, the 
French commander, was killed in the open- 
ing of the engagement. 

Of eighty-six English officers sixty-three 
were killed or wounded; and about one- 
half the private soldiers fell, while a num- 
ber were made prisoners. For two hours 
the battle raged, until Braddock, having 
had five horses shot under him, went down 
himself, mortally wounded. Then the reg- 
ulars that remained took flight, and Wash- 
ington, left in command, ordered a retreat, 
carrying with him his dying general. 
Braddock. died three days after the battle, 
expressing regret that he had not followed 
the counsel of Washington. The British 
prisoners were taken to Duquesne, and that 
evening the Indians lighted fires on the 
banks of the Allegheny River, near the fort, 
and tortured the captives to death. An 
English boy who was a prisoner at Du- 



248 Turning Points in the 

quesne, having been previously captured, 
and who afterward related his experience 
in a narrative, a copy of which the writer 
has examined, says that the cries of the 
victims could be heard in the fort. The 
boy himself was subjected to closer confine- 
ment than usual, apparently for fear that 
the savages might demand that he be given 
up to them. 

The French continued to win battles, 
until a master hand seized the helm in 
Great Britain. William Pitt, the "Great 
Commoner," determined upon a vigorous 
prosecution of the war in America. Gen- 
eral John Forbes was sent in 1758, with 
about nine thousand men to reduce Fort 
Duquesne. The illness which caused his 
death in the following year .may be fairly 
accepted in excuse and explanation of the 
incompetent management of the expedition, 
and its almost fatal delays. Fortunately 
the French appeared to have lost the vigor 
and daring which they had displayed in 
the defeat of Braddock, and the sullen roar 
of an explosion, when the British troops 
were within a few miles of Duquesne, gave 
notice that it had been abandoned without 
a blow. General Forbes changed the name 
of the place to Fort Pitt, in honor of that 
illustrious minister to whose energetic direc- 
tion of affairs was largely due the expulsion 
of the French arms from North America. 



World's History. 249 

When Westminster Abbey shall have crum- 
bled over the tombs of Britain's heroes, and 
the House of Hanover shall have joined the 
misty dynasties of the past, Pittsburg will 
remain a monument, growing in grandeur 
with the progress of ages, to England's 
great statesman of the eighteenth century. 
The French never returned to the forks 
of the Ohio. From the hour of their retreat 
from Duquesne they gave up step by step 
to the British, until the battle of the Plains 
of Abraham put an end to the once mag- 
nificent dream of a greater France in the 
New World. 

SARATOGA. 

The disastrous campaign of General Sir 
John Burgoyne in the summer of 1777 
against Northern New York was the turn- 
ing-point of the American Revolution. 
The object of the invasion was to seize the 
Hudson River, and divide the colonies by 
a continuous British line from Canada to 
the city of New York. Had the plan suc- 
ceeded it would have been an almost fatal 
blow to the cause of independence. Its 
failure was not due to the courage or skill 
of any one American commander, but to 
the indomitable resolution with which 
every step of the invading army was re- 
sisted by Americans of every rank. The 
whole country rose as one man to oppose 



250 Turning Points in the 

and harass the enemy, and it seemed as if 
every militiaman understood that the fate 
of his country depended on the repulse or 
destruction of the foe. 

Burgoyne' s plan of campaign, as con- 
certed with the British ministry, was to 
march to Albany with a large force by way 
of Lakes Champlain and George, while 
another force under Sir Henry Clinton ad- 
vanced up the Hudson. At the same time 
Colonel Barry St. Leger was to make a 
diversion by way of Oswego, on the Mo- 
hawk River. Burgoyne began his advance 
in June, with about eight thousand men. 
Proceeding up Lake Champlain he com- 
pelled the Americans to evacuate Crown 
Point, Ticonderoga and Fort Anne. His 
first blunder was in failing to avail himself 
of the water carriage of Lake George, at 
the head of which there was a direct road 
to Fort Edward. Instead of taking this 
course he spent three weeks in cutting a 
road through the woods, and building 
bridges over swamps. This gave time for 
General Schuyler to gather the yeomanry 
in arms, and for Washington to send troops 
from the southern department to reinforce 
Schuyler. Burgoyne also lost valuable 
time in a disastrous attack on Bennington. 

Burgoyne issued a proclamation in most 
bombastic style. In the preamble he stated, 
besides his military and other distinctions, 



World's History. 251 

that he was ' ' author of a celebrated tragic 
comedy called the 'Blockade of Boston.' " 
He accused the patriots of enormities "un- 
precedented in the inquisitions of the 
Romish Church," and offered to give en- 
couragement, employment and assistance 
to all who would aid the side of the king. 
"I have but to give stretch," he concluded, 
"to the Indian forces under my direction — 
and they amount to thousands — to overtake 
the hardened enemies of Great Britain and 
America. I consider them the same wher- 
ever they lurk. If notwithstanding these 
endeavors and sincere inclination to assist 
them the frenzy of hostility should remain, 
I trust I shall stand acquitted in the eyes 
of God and of men in denouncing and ex- 
ecuting the vengeance of the State against 
the willful outcasts. The messengers of 
justice and of wrath await them in the field, 
and devastation, famine and every concomi- 
tant horror that a reluctant but indispen- 
sable prosecution of military duty must 
occasion will bar the way to their return." 
While Burgoyne's army was lying near 
Fort Edward occurred the tragic death of 
Jane McCrea, celebrated in song and story. 
Jane was the second daughter of the Rev- 
erend James McCrea, a Presbyterian clerg}^- 
man of Scottish descent, and she made her 
home with her brother, John, at Fort Ed- 
ward, New York. John McCrea was a 



252 Turning Points in the 

patriot, but Jane had for her lover an officer 
in Burgoyne's army named David Jones, 
to whom she was betrothed. Between John 
McCrea and David Jones an estrangement 
had arisen on account of their opposite 
political sympathies, but Jane clung to her 
affianced. ' ' My dear Jenny, ' ' wrote Jones, 
under date of July n, 1777, "these are sad 
times, but I think the war will end this 
year, as the rebels cannot hold out, and will 
see their error. By the blessing of Provi- 
dence I trust we shall yet pass many years 

together in peace No more at 

present, but believe me yours affectionately 
till death." How faithfully he kept that 
promise ! 

Jane McCrea well deserved her lover's 
devotion. She is described as a young 
woman of rare accomplishments, great per- 
sonal attractions, and of a remarkable 
sweetness of disposition.* She was of 
medium stature, finely formed, of a delicate 
blonde complexion. Her hair was of a 
golden brown and silken lustre, and when 
unbound trailed upon the ground. Her 
father was devoted to literary pursuits, and 
she thus had acquired a taste for reading, 
unusual in one of her age — about twenty - 
four years — in those early times. 



♦See "The Burgoyne Ballads." by William I,. Stone, 
from whose narrative this sketch is taken. 



World's History. 253 

When Burgoyne's army was about four 
miles from Fort Edward, David Jones sent 
a party of Indians, under Duluth, a half- 
breed, to escort his betrothed to the British 
camp, where they were to be married at 
once by Chaplain Brudenell, Lady Harriet 
Acland and Madame Riedesel, wife of Gen- 
eral Riedesel, in command of the Brunswick 
contingent, having consented to be present 
at the wedding. It had been arranged that 
Duluth should halt in the woods about a 
quarter of a mile from the house of a Mrs. 
McNeil where Jane was waiting to join him 
at the appointed time. Meanwhile it hap- 
pened that a fierce Wyandotte chief named 
Le Loup, with a band of marauding Indians 
from the British camp, drove in a scouting 
party of Americans, and stopping on their 
return from the pursuit at Mrs. McNeil's 
house, took her and Jane captive, with the 
intention of taking them to the British 
camp. On their way back Le Loup and 
his followers encountered Duluth and his 
party. The half-breed stated his errand 
and demanded that Jane be given up to> 
him. Le Loup insisted on escorting her. 
Angry words followed and Le Loup, in 
violent passion, shot Jane through the 
heart. Then the savage tore the scalp from 
his victim and carried it to the British 
camp. Mrs. McNeil had arrived at the 
camp a little in advance, having been sep- 



254 Turning Poi?its in the 

arated from Jane before the tragedy. She 
at once recognized the beautiful tresses. 
David Jones never recovered from the shock. 
It is said that he was so crushed by the ter- 
rible blow, and disgusted with the apathy 
of Burgoyne in refusing to punish the mis- 
creant who brought the scalp of Jane 
McCrea to the camp as a trophy, claiming 
the bount}' offered for such prizes by the 
British, that he asked for a discharge and 
upon this being refused deserted, having 
first rescued the precious relic of his beloved 
from the savages. Jones retired to the 
Canadian wilderness, and spent the remain- 
der of his life unmarried, a silent and mel- 
ancholy man. 

The murder of Jane McCrea fired New 
York. From every farm, from every vil- 
lage, from every cabin in the woods the 
men of America thronged to avenge her 
death. Her name was a rallying cry along 
the banks of the Hudson and in the moun- 
tains of Vermont, and ''her death con- 
tributed in no slight degree to Burgoyne 's 
defeat, which became a precursor and prin- 
cipal cause of American independence."* 

The force of about two thousand men, 
whom Colonel Barry St. Leger led into the 
forests of what is now Oneida County, met 
stout resistance, and but for the Indian 
allies of the British, led by the great Mo- 

* Stone, " The Burgoyne Ballads." 



World's History. 255 

hawk chief, Joseph Brant, St. Leger's 
troops would probably have been destroyed 
or made captive. The fierce battle of Oris- 
kany, in which the brave General Herkimer 
received a fatal wound, was a patriot vic- 
tory, but it gave St. I,eger a respite. When 
he heard that Benedict Arnold was ap- 
proaching with troops sent by General 
Schuyler, to give him battle, he retreated 
to Lake Ontario, shattering Burgoyne's 
hopes of aid from the Tories of the Mo- 
hawk Valley. Meanwhile Congress had 
relieved General Schuyler from command 
in the North, and appointed Horatio Gates 
in his place. Gates was not a man of 
ability, but he was ably seconded in his 
operations against Burgoyne by Benedict 
Arnold. 

General Howe had intended to take 
Philadelphia and then co-operate with Bur- 
goyne in inflicting a final and crushing 
blow on the Americans, but the Fabian 
strategy of Washington again proved too 
much for the British. Howe being pre- 
vented by Washington from crossing New 
Jersey with his army, undertook an expe- 
dition by sea. He sailed up Chesapeake 
Bay, marched northward with 18,000 men 
to Brandywine Creek, and there met Wash- 
ington with 11,000, on the eleventh of Sep- 
tember. The British held the field, but 
Washington retreated slowly, disputing 



256 Turning Points in the 

every foot of ground, and it was not until 
the twenty-sixth of September that Howe 
entered Philadelphia. Washington attacked 
the British encampment at Germantown at 
daybreak on the fourth of October, and 
attempted to drive the British into the 
Schu3 T lkill River. One American battalion 
fired into another by mistake, and this un- 
happy accident probably saved the British 
from another Trenton on a larger scale. 
Howe was unable to send any assistance to 
Burgoyne until it was too late to save that 
commander. 

Burgoyne found his progress stopped by 
the intrenchments of the Americans under 
General Gates, at Bemis Heights, nine 
miles south of Saratoga, and he endeavored 
to extricate himself from his perilous posi- 
tion by fighting. 

On September 19, Burgoyne attacked the 
American lines. The patriots were well 
prepared to receive him. General Benedict 
Arnold, who commanded the American left, 
did not wait for the enemy to come, but 
having approached under cover of the 
woods, charged furiously on Burgoyne' s 
centre. The battle raged fiercely for about 
four hours, Arnold displaying the most 
reckless bravery, in marked contrast to the 
cautious policy of his superior, General 
Gates. The American troops were ani- 
mated by their leader's example, and 



World's History. . 257 

astonished the British 03' the desperate 
courage with which they disputed the 
ground. At length, under cover of dark- 
ness, the Americans drew off, after killing 
and wounding 600 of the 3500 British. 
The American loss was much less, and 
although Burgoyne held the field he realized 
that another conflict with similar havoc 
would be the ruin of himself and his army. 
He looked anxiously for the reinforcements 
which did not come. 

On the seventh of October the British, 
with their Tory and Indian allies, moved 
forward to another attack. This time the 
Americans were better prepared, and made 
stronger than on the first day's battle. 
They rushed upon Burgoyne' s lines, and 
the Germans and the grenadiers gave way 
before the impetuous charge. General 
Simon Fraser, the best, and one of the 
bravest of Burgoyne' s officers, was shot dead 
while attempting to cover the retreat. 
Fearing danger to his own lines Burgoyne 
abandoned the field, leaving six cannon to 
the victors, and many dead and wounded. 
Benedict Arnold followed in a headlong 
charge upon the British intrenchments. 
His horse was shot under him, and he was 
wounded in the leg; but he broke through 
the British lines, and held out against all 
attacks. Burgoyne abandoned his lines 
that night, and occupied a new position. 



258 Turning Points in the 

The fate of his army was now sealed. He 
was cut off from assistance, and at the 
mercy of Gates. The funeral of General 
Fraser, under these melancholy circum- 
stances, was a peculiarly sad celebration. 

On October 16, a convention was signed 
by the terms of which Burgoyne surrendered 
his entire army to the Americans. The 
force surrendered numbered 5763 men, and 
included two lieutenant-generals, two major- 
generals and three brigadier-generals. The 
ordnance, part of which had previously 
been taken in battle by the Americans, con- 
sisted of thirty-eight pieces of light artil- 
lery attached to columns, six twenty-four 
pounders, six twelve-pounders and four 
howitzers. 

The surrender of Burgoyne gave to the 
American cause a status which it had 
lacked abroad, and it brought into full and 
effectual exercise the diplomatic side of the 
struggle for independence. It was then 
that Franklin showed himself another 
Washington. "On the great question of 
the foreign relations of the United States," 
says Wharton, "it made no matter whether 
he was alone or surrounded by unfriendly 
colleagues; it was only through him that 
negotiations could be carried on with 
France, for to him alone could the French 
government commit itself with the con- 
sciousness that the enormous confidences 



World* s History, 259 

reposed in him would be honorably 
guarded." France, chiefly through the in- 
fluence of Franklin, had given covert as- 
sistance to the colonies from the beginning 
of the struggle, but the French ministry 
hesitated to take a decisive step. Fear 
that the Americans would succumb, and 
leave France to bear the weight of British 
nostility, and apprehension that England 
might grant the demands of the colonists 
and then turn her forces against European 
foes, deterred the French government from 
avowed support of the American cause. 
The news from Saratoga gave assurance 
that America would prove a steadfast as well 
as a powerful ally, and that with the aid of 
the United States the British empire might 
be dismembered, and France avenged for 
her losses and humiliations on the Ameri- 
can continent. Nor was revenge the only 
motive which led France to cast her lot 
with the revolted colonies. England was 
already stretching forth to establish her 
power in India, and France felt that with 
North America and India both subject to 
the British, the maritime and commercial 
superiority of England would be a menace 
to other powers. 

France did not act without long and 
careful premeditation on the part of the 
French crown and its ministers, for the re- 
lations between England and her American 



260 Turning Points in the 

colonies had been carefully and acutely 
considered by the statesmen of Versailles 
long before the point of open revolt was 
reached. Even when France concluded to 
throw her resources into the scale on the 
side of the United States she did not alto- 
gether abandon her cautious attitude. The 
French government acknowledged the 
United States as a sovereign and treat} T - 
making power; but while the treaty of 
commerce of February 6, 1778, was abso- 
lute and immediate in its effects, the treaty 
of alliance of the same date was contingent 
on war taking place between Great Britain 
and France. 

Upon receiving formal notice of the treat- 
ies Lord North immediately recalled the 
British ambassador from Paris, and George 
III. stated, in bad English, to Lord North 
(the king spelled "Pennsylvania" "Pen- 
silvania," and "wharfs" "warfs") that a 
corps must be drawn from the army in 
America sufficient to attack the French 
islands. There was a state of partial war 
without a declaration of war. The naval 
forces of England and France came into un- 
authorized collision, and war was the result. 

LAKE ERIK. 

Upon the struggle for the control of Lake 
Erie during the War of 181 2 depended 
whether England should succeed in pre- 



World's History. 261 

venting the western growth of the United 
States, or be driven forever from the soil 
which Americans claimed as their own. 
Master-Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry 
was but twenty-six years of age when the 
Navy Department called him from his 
pleasant home at Newport and sent him 
to command a navy summoned from the 
primeval forests of the Northwest. Young 
as he was Perry had seen service in the 
wars with France and Tripoli, and he had 
requested the Navy Department at the com- 
mencement of the conflict with England to 
send him where he could meet the enemies 
of his country. Perry arrived at Erie, then 
known as Presque Isle, in March, 18 13. 
Sailing-Master Daniel Dobbins and Noah 
Brown, a shipwright from New York, were 
busily at work on the new fleet. Two 
brigs, the Niagara and the Lawrence, were 
built with white and black oak and chestnut 
frames, the outside planking being of oak 
and the decks of pine. Two gunboats 
were newly planked up, and work on a 
schooner was just begun. The vessels had 
to be vigilantly guarded against attack by 
the British, who were fully aware of the 
work being done. The capture of Fort 
George left the Niagara River open, and 
several American vessels which had been 
unable before to pass the Canadian batter- 
ies were now, with great exertion, drawn 



262 Turning Points in the 

into the lake. These were the brig Cale- 
donia, the schooners Somers, Tigress and 
Ohio, and the sloop Trippe. An English 
squadron set out to intercept the new arri- 
vals, but Perry succeeded in gaining the 
harbor of Erie before the enemy made their 
appearance. 

The American ships were ready for sea 
on July 10, but officers and sailors were 
lacking, and it was not until about the 
close of the month that Perry had three 
hundred men to man his ten vessels. 
While the British squadron, under Captain 
Robert Heriot Barclay maintained a vigor- 
ous blockade, Perry found that his new 
brigs could not cross the bar without landing 
their guns and being blocked up on scows. 
Commander Barclay, thinking that Perry 
could not move, made a visit of ceremony 
with his squadron to Port Dover, on the 
Canadian side. During Barclay's absence 
Perry got the Lawrence and Niagara over 
the bar, and the British commander was 
astonished when he returned on the morn- 
ing of August 5, to see the American fleet 
riding at anchor, and ready for battle. 
Barclay wished to delay the naval combat 
until after the completion at Maiden of a 
ten-gun ship called the Detroit, which was 
to be added to his force, and he therefore 
put into that harbor.* Perry improved the 

* Maiden, on the Detroit River, eighteen miles below the 
city of Detroit, is now known as Amherstburg. 



World's History. 263 

delay to exercise his crews, largely made 
up of soldiers, in seamanship. 

It was not until September 10 that the 
British squadron came out to give battle. 
Master-Commandant Perry had nine vessels 
mounting fifty-four guns, with 1536 pounds 
of metal. The British squadron consisted 
of six vessels, mounting sixty-three guns, 
with a total weight of 852 pounds. The 
American vessels were manned by 400 men 
and the British by 502 men and boys. In 
discipline, training and physical condition, 
however, the difference of crews was much 
more in favor of the British than the num- 
bers indicate. The brig Lawrence was 
Perry's flagship; Barclay's pennant flew on 
the Detroit. As the American vessels stood 
out to sea Perry hoisted a large blue flag 
with the words of the dying Lawrence in 
white muslin — " Don't give up the ship!" 
He prepared for defeat as well as for vic- 
tory, by gathering all his important papers 
in a package weighted and ready to be 
thrown overboard in the event of disaster. 
It may be said that Perry fought the earlier 
part of the battle almost alone, a slow-sail- 
ing brig, the Caledonia, being in line ahead 
of the Niagara, and Perry, having given 
orders that the vessels should preserve their 
stations. 

In the duel of long guns the British had a 
decided advantage and their fire being con- 



264 Turning Poi?ifs in the 

centrated on the Lawrence that vessel soon 
became a wreck. Of one hundred and 
three men fit for dut}^ on board the Ameri- 
can flagship, eighty -three* were killed or 
wounded. These figures sufficiently in- 
dicate the carnage; but Perry fought on. 
"Can any of the wounded pull a rope?" 
cried Perry, and mangled men crawled out 
to help in training the guns. For nearly 
three hours the Lawrence with the schooners 
Ariel and Scorpion fought the British fleet. 
Then Master-Commandant Elliott, of the 
Niagara, fearing Perry had been killed, 
undertook, notwithstanding Perry's pre- 
vious orders, to go out of line to the help of 
the Lawrence. Perry then changed his flag 
to the Niagara, leaving orders with First 
Lieutenant John J. Yarnall, of the Law- 
rence, to hold out to the last. Perry at 
once sent Master-Commandant Elliott in a 
boat to bring up the schooners, and mean- 
time Lieutenant Yarnall, deciding that fur- 
ther resistance would mean the destruction 
of all on board, lowered the flag of the 
Lawrence. The English thought they were 
already victors, and gave three cheers, but 
the Lawrence drifted out of range before 
they could take possession of her, and the 
Stars and Stripes were raised again over 
her blood-stained decks. 

The battle had in truth only begun, but 
was soon to end. The remainder of the 



World's History. 265 

American squadron closed in on the Eng- 
lish vessels, raking them fore and aft. 
The English officers and men were swept 
from their decks by the hurricane of iron. 
It was the United States and the Macedon- 
ian 011 a smaller scale. The American 
cannonade at close quarters was so fast and 
furious that the British ships were soon in 
a condition that left no choice save between 
sinking or surrender. In fifteen minutes 
after the Americans closed in a British 
officer waved a white handkerchief. The 
enemy had struck. Two of the English 
vessels, the Chippewa and the Little Belt, 
sought to escape to Maiden, but were pur- 
sued and captured by the sloop Trippe and 
the Scorpion.* Perry proceeded to the 
Lawrence, and on the decks of his flagship, 
still slippery with blood, he received the 
surrender of the English officers. Perry 
wrote with a pencil on the back of an old 



* "At half-past two, the wind springing up, Captain Elliott 
was enabled to bring his vessel, the Niagara, into close ac- 
tion. I immediately went on board of her, when he antici- 
pated my wish by volunteering to bring the schooners, 
which had been kept astern by the lightness of the wind, 
into close action. At forty-five minutes past two the signal 
was made for close action. The Niagara being very little 
injured I determined to pass through the enemy's line, bore 
up aud passed ahead of their two ships and a brig, large 
schooner and sloop from the larboard side, at half pistol 
shot distance. The smaller vessels at this time having got- 
ten within grape and canister distance, under the direction 
of Captain E)lliott, and keeping up a well-directed fire, the 
two ships, a brig and a schooner, surrendered, a schooner 
and a sloop making a vain attempt to escape."— Perry's ac- 
count of the battle. 



266 Turning Pomts in the 

letter his famous dispatch: "We have met 
the enemy, and they are ours — two ships, 
two brigs, one schooner and one sloop. ' ' 
The Americans lost in the battle twenty- 
seven killed and ninety-six wounded, of 
whom twenty-two were killed and sixty-one 
wounded on board the Lawrence. Twelve 
of the American quarter-deck officers were 
killed. The British lost forty-one killed 
and ninety-four wounded, making a total 
of one hundred and thirty-five. Comman- 
der Barclay, one of Nelson's veterans, had 
lost an arm in a previous naval engagement. 
He gave his men an admirable example of 
courage, being twice wounded, once in the 
thigh and once in the shoulder, thus being 
deprived of the use of his remaining arm. 
Captain Finnis, of the Queen Charlotte, 
was mortally wounded, and died on the same 
evening. 

Thousands on the American and British 
shores witnessed or listened to the conflict, 
conscious that upon the result depended the 
future of the Northwest. None listened 
with more patriotic eagerness than John 
Kinzie, already mentioned as the first resi- 
dent of Chicago, then a prisoner at Maiden, 
having been removed from Detroit on sus- 
picion that he was in correspondence with 
General Harrison. Kinzie was taking a 
promenade under guard, when he heard the 
guns on Lake Erie. The time allotted to 



World's History. 267 

the prisoner for his daily walk expired, but 
neither he nor his guard observed the fact, 
so anxiously were they catching every sound 
from what they now felt sure was an en- 
gagement between ships of war. At length 
Mr. Kinzie was reminded that the hour for 
his return to confinement had arrived. He 
pleaded for another half hour. 

"Let me stay," said he, "till we can 
learn how the battle has gone." 

Very soon a sloop appeared under press 
of sail, rounding the point, and presently 
two vessels in chase of her. 

"She is running — she bears the British 
colors," cried Kinzie — "yes, yes, they are 
lowering — they are striking her flag ! Now' ' 
— turning to the soldiers, "I will go back 
to prison contented. I know how the bat- 
tle has gone. ' ' 

The sloop was the Little Belt, the last of 
the British fleet to surrender, after a vain 
attempt to escape. The Father of Chicago 
had seen the end of the battle which made 
possible the Chicago of to-day. 

Perry's victory compelled the enemy to 
evacuate Detroit, and all their posts in 
American territory except Michilimacinac, 
which place remained in the possession of 
the British until the close of the war. Soon 
after the battle of Lake Erie, General Har- 
rison crossed to the Canadian shore, entered 
Maiden, and then passed on in pursuit of 



268 Turning Points in the 

Proctor and Tecumseh, who were in full 
retreat up the valley of the Thames. In 
the battle of the Thames, which followed, 
the British were completely routed, and 
Tecumseh was slain. The Northwest was 
now secure. The British had been driven 
back and their Indian alty, Tecumseh, with 
his great scheme of an independent Indian 
power, had passed away. 



CERRO GORDO. 

While the annexation of Texas was the 
immediate provocation of war between the 
United States and Mexico, yet the question 
whether North America should be domi- 
nated by men of the British or the Spanish- 
American race was, like slavery, to be settled 
only on the battlefield. Up to that decision 
Mexico believed herself to be in power and 
prowess, as she was almost in territor}^, the 
equal of the United States. The armies of 
Scott and Taylor proved in some of the 
best-fought battles of history that the North 
American Republic was the leading power 
of the continent. 

The American Government and people 
were not unprepared for a challenge from 
Mexico, and rather welcomed it, as, apart 
from the Texas issue, Mexico had, from 
the time of her independence, treated the 
United States in a manner far from neigh- 



World's History. 269 

borly, and inflicted many injuries on 
American citizens. In the West and South 
especially it was deemed necessary to give 
Mexico a lesson ; in New England the war 
was not popular. Hostilities began, and 
two sharp battles were fought, before war 
was actually declared. General Zachary 
Taylor, with a force much inferior to that 
of the enemy, defeated the Mexicans at 
Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, and 
drove them out of Texas. At Resaca the 
American dragoons under Captain May 
charged straight upon a Mexican battery, 
killing the gunners and capturing the Mex- 
ican general La Vega just as he was about 
to apply a match to one of the pieces. The 
Mexican army was so completely scattered 
that their commander Arista fled unaccom- 
panied across the Rio Grande. At Buena 
Vista Generals Taylor and Wool, with 5000 
men, of whom only 500 were regular troops, 
confronted Santa Anna with 20,000, Feb- 
ruary 23, 1847. The Mexican chieftain 
expected an easy victory, and his army, in- 
spired with his confidence, rushed from 
their mountains upon the small force of 
Americans drawn up in battle array on the 
plain of Angostura. 

"Like the fierce Northern hurricane 
That sweeps his great plateau, 
Flushed with the triumph yet to gain, 
Came down the serried foe. 



270 Turning Points in the 

Who heard the thunder of the fray 
Break o'er the field beneath, 
Well knew the watchword of that day- 
Was victory or death." 

The battle lasted all day, the American 
artillery being splendidly handled, and 
mowing down the Mexicans at every charge. 
"Give 'em a little more grape, Captain 
Bragg!" said Taylor, quietly, as he saw 
Santa Anna's lines wavering. The grape 
was given, and the Mexicans fled, leaving 
500 of their number dead or dying on the 
field. The total Mexican loss, including 
wounded and prisoners was about 2000 ; that 
of the Americans in killed, wounded and 
missing, 746. This victory and the success 
of Fremont and Kearney in California, 
completed the conquest of Northern Mexico. 

General W infield Scott, who was in su- 
preme command of all the American forces, 
conducted a brilliant campaign from the 
coast. After taking Vera Cruz and the 
castle of San Juan de Ulloa, General Scott 
advanced toward the City of Mexico with 
about 10,000 men. At Cerro Gordo, a 
difficult pass in the mountains, the Ameri- 
can army encountered 12,000 Mexicans 
under command of Santa Anna, who had, 
by extraordinary efforts, collected this force 
after his defeat at Buena Vista. The battle 
was fought on April 18, every movement of 
the American troops being directed, accord- 



World's History. 271 

ing to a carefully prepared plan, by General 
Scott. Colonel Harvey led the storming 
party into the pass, with a deep river on 
one side, and batteries belching death from 
lofty rocks on the other side. The Ameri- 
cans rushed forward with irresistible cour- 
age. They knew their enemy. The 
Alamo had not been forgotten. 

Cerro Gordo fell, and the flight of the 
Mexicans may best be described in the 
language of one of their own historians: 
"General Santa Anna accompanied by 
some of his adjutants, was passing along 
the road to the left of the batter} 7 , when the 
enemy's column, now out of the woods, 
appeared on his line of retreat and fired 
upon him, forcing him back. The carriage 
in which he had left Jalapa was riddled 
with shot, the mules killed and taken by 
the enemy, as well as a wagon containing 
$16,000 received the day before for the pay 
of the soldiers. Every tie of command and 
obedience now being broken among our 
troops, safety alone being the object, and 
all being involved in a frightful confusion, 
they rushed desperately to the narrow pass 
of the defile that descended to the Plan del 
Rio, where the general- in-chief had pro- 
ceeded, with the chiefs and officers accom- 
panying him. Horrid indeed was the 
descent by that narrow and rocky path 
where thousands rushed, disputing the pass- 



272 Turning Points in the 

age with desperation, and leaving a track 
of blood upon the road. All classes being 
confounded military distinction and respect 
were lost; and badges of rank became 
marks of sarcasm. The enemy, now masters 
of our camp, turned their guns upon the 
fugitives, thus augmenting the terror of the 
multitude that crowded through the defile 
and pressed forward every instant by a new 
impulse, which increased the confusion and 
disgrace of that ill-fated day." Of the 
12,000 Mexicans engaged in this battle 
about I200w 7 ere killed and wounded, and 
3000 were made prisoners. The captives 
w 7 ere all paroled, and the sick and wounded 
sent to Jalapa, where they were well cared 
for. The Castle of Perote, the strongest 
fortress in Mexico, surrendered without re- 
sistance, and the American flag was un- 
furled on the summit of the eastern Cor- 
dilleras. 

Cerro Gordo was the decisive engagement, 
but more fierce conflicts occurred before 
General Scott planted the American flag, 
on September 14, 1847, in the City of 
Mexico. From the National Palace of that 
Republic General Scott issued a general 
order in which, with justifiable pride, he 
declared: "Beginning with August 10 and 
ending the fourteenth instant, this army 
has gallantly fought its way through the 
fields and forts of Contreras, San Antonio, 



World's History. 273 

Chnrnbusco, Molino del Rey, Chapultepec 
and the gates of San Cosme and Tacubaya 
into the capital of Mexico. When the very 
limited number who have performed these 
brilliant deeds shall have become known, 
the world will be astonished and our own 
countrymen filled with joy and admiration. ' ' 
The triumphs of Scott and Taylor added 
luster to American arms which time will 
not efface. They recall the exploits of 
Cortes and Pizarro, save in the scrupulous 
honor and humanity which guided every 
step of the American invasion. No vic- 
tors were ever more generous in their treat- 
ment of the conquered. ' ' The soldiers of 
Vera Cruz," says a Mexican historian, 
"received the honor due to their valor and 
misfortunes. Not even a look was given 
them by the enemy's soldiers which could 
be interpreted into an insult. ' ' The Duke 
of Wellington, the conqueror of Napoleon, 
followed Scott's campaign with deep inter- 
est and caused its movements to be marked 
on a map daily, as information was received. 
Admiring its triumphs up to the basin of 
Mexico, Wellington then said: ' 'Scott is 
lost. He has been carried away by success. 
He can't take the city, and he can't fall 
back on his base. ' ' Wellington proved to be 
wrong. He had never met American troops. 
The treaty of Guadalupe- Hidalgo, con- 
cluded February 2, 1848, established the 



274 Turning Points in the 

Rio Grande as the boundary between the 
United States and Mexico, and California 
and New Mexico, including what is now 
Arizona, were ceded to the United States 
for $15,000,000. The United States also 
assumed the payment of obligations due by 
Mexico to American citizens to the amount 
of $3,250,000, and discharged Mexico 
from all claims of citizens of the United 
States against that Republic. Strict pro- 
vision was made for the preservation of the 
rights of the inhabitants of the ceded terri- 
tory. The Gadsden Purchase, in 1S53— so 
called from General James Gadsden, who 
conducted the negotiations in behalf of the 
United States — added 45,535 square miles 
of Mexican territory to the United States, 
for which this country paid $10,000,000, 
Mexico at the same time relinquishing 
claims against the United States for Indian 
depredations amounting to from $15,000,- 
000 to $30,000,000. The American Re- 
public thus received in all, as a consequence 
of the Mexican War, 591,398 square miles, 
and the Union acquired its present bound- 
aries, exclusive of Alaska. 

The Mexican War gave to the United 
States the Pacific as well as the Atlantic sea- 
board, and completed the w r estern movement 
which had begun with the very birth of the 
Republic. It made the United States the 
great power of the American continent, 






World's History. 275 

seated between the two oceans, with a 
domain unequaled in natural resources by 
any other region of the world. 



GETTYSBURG. 

Gettysburg is universally regarded as the 
decisive conflict of the Rebellion. In the 
beginning of the war the North was at a 
disadvantage. Mr. Lincoln found the little 
army of the United States scattered and 
disorganized, the navy sent to distant quar- 
ters of the globe, the treasury bankrupt 
and the public service demoralized, 

Floyd and his fellow-conspirators had done 
their work thoroughly. It did not take 
long for the people of the North to rally to 
the defence of the government, and for an 
army to be formed capable not only of de- 
fending the loyal States, but of striking a 
blow at the Confederacy. With the Na- 
tional credit restored, an abundance of cur- 
rency provided for national needs, and the 
public departments cleared of Southern 
sympathizers, the North entered upon a 
conflict which could have but one ending 
should the Northern States remain stead- 
fast. 

The weakness of the South, from a mili- 
tary standpoint, was in the fact that men 
lost could not be replaced. 

The North could replenish its depleted 



276 Turning Points in the 

armies; the South could not. With men 
therefore of the same race and equal in sol- 
dierly qualities arrayed against each other, 
one side within measurable distance of ex- 
haustion and the other with inexhaustible 
human resources to draw upon, the war be- 
came an easy sum in arithmetic, provided 
the stronger party should not cry "enough" 
before the weaker had reached the exhaus- 
tion point. The battles on comparatively 
equal terms were fought, therefore, in the 
early part of the war, the decisive battles 
in 1863, and the closing struggle between 
the gasping Confederacy and the Union 
stronger than ever, in the last fifteen 
months of the conflict. 

While, under the able generalship of 
Grant and Sherman, the Union forces in the 
West made steady progress, almost from 
the beginning of the war, in the East the 
record of our armies was for nearly two 
years one of almost monotonous defeat. 
The tide turned at Gettysburg. General 
George Gordon Meade succeeded General 
Joseph Hooker in command of the Army of 
the Potomac. Meade was not a brilliant 
man, but he was a thorough soldier, and 
eminently free from that spirit of envy 
which was the bane of our armies, which 
had nearly driven Grant from the service, 
and which was responsible for the loss of 
more than one battle. Elated by Chancel- 



World's History. 277 

lorsville, Lee determined to invade the 
North. The Sonth made an extreme effort 
to replenish its armies, and that of North- 
ern Virginia was raised to about 100,000 
men. With the greater part of this mag- 
nificent host, including 15,000 cavalry and 
280 guns, Lee marched down the Shenan- 
doah Valley, crossed the Potomac on the 
twenty-fifth of June, and headed for Cham- 
bersburg. Meade drew near with the Army 
of the Potomac, and such reinforcements as 
had been hastily collected in Pennsylvania 
on the news of the invasion. 

At Gettysburg the two armies met for the 
decisive battle of the war. Meade had on 
the field 83,000 men and 300 guns; Lee, 
69,000 men and 250 guns. For three days 
the two armies contended with frightful 
losses, and with a courage not surpassed in 
ancient or modern warfare. The brave 
General John F. Reynolds lost his life in 
the first encounter, and General Winfield 
Scott Hancock was sent by Meade to take 
charge of the field. On the second day oc- 
curred the desperate conflict for Little 
Round Top, which resulted in that key to 
the Union line being seized and held by 
the Union troops. Neither side, however, 
gained any decided advantage. On the 
third day Lee prepared for the grand move- 
ment known in history as "Pickett's 
Charge. ' ' Fourteen thousand men were 



278 Turning Points hi the 

selected as the forlorn hope of the Confed- 
eracy. For two hours before the charge 
120 guns kept up a fearful cannonade upon 
the Union lines. Meade answered with 
eighty guns. About three o'clock in the 
afternoon Meade ceased firing. Lee thought 
the Northern gunners were silenced. He 
was mistaken; they knew what was coming. 
On moved the charging column, as the 
smoke of battle lifted, and the "tattered 
uniforms and bright muskets" came plainly 
into view. At an average distance of about 
eleven hundred yards the Union batteries 
opened. Shot and shell tore through the 
Confederate ranks. Still they marched on 
over wounded and dying and dead. Canis- 
ter now rained on their ranks, and as they 
came within closer range a hurricane of 
bullets burst upon them, and men dropped 
on every side like leaves in the winds of 
autumn. The strength of the charging 
column melted before the gale of death; 
but the survivors staggered on. When the 
remains of the Confederate right reached 
the Union works their three brigade com- 
manders had fallen, ever} 7 field officer ex- 
cept one had been killed or wounded ; but 
still the remnant kept its face to the foe, 
led to annihilation by the dauntless Armis- 
tead. The four brigades on the left of 
Pickett met a similar fate. "They moved 
up splendidly," wrote a Union officer, 



World's History. 279 

"deploying as they crossed the long sloping 
interval. The front of the column was 
nearly up the slope, and within a few 
yards of the Second Corps' front and its 
batteries, when suddenly a terrific fire from 
every available gun on Cemetery Ridge 
burst upon them. Their graceful lines 
underwent an instantaneous transformation 
in a dense cloud of smoke and dust; arms, 
heads, blankets, guns and knapsacks were 
tossed in the air, and the moan from the 
battlefield was heard amid the storm of 
battle." 

One half of the 14,000 perished in the 
charge. Gettysburg was over, and the 
tide of invasion from the South was rolled 
back never to return. Meade had lost 
about 23,000 men, and L,ee probably many 
more than this number. His loss was 
not officially reported. Halleck, whose 
business as general-in-chief seemed to 
be to annoy successful commanders, 
and irritate them to the resignation 
point, blamed Meade for allowing Lee to 
retire without another battle, but public 
opinion upheld the victor of Gettysburg, 
and Congress honored him and Generals 
Hancock and O. O. Howard with a resolu- 
tion of thanks. 

The writer has been told by a veteran of 
Gettysburg that from that eventful Fourth 
of July a new spirit seemed to animate the 



280 Turning Points in the 

Union troops. They saw that the}' could 
defeat the Confederates under the ablest 
Confederate commander, and the depression 
of former disasters was lifted from the breasts 
of our soldiers. Besides the}' justly looked 
upon Lee's retreat as a final retreat, and 
went forward with fresh courage toward the 
goal which at last appeared within reach. 
The Confederacy never recovered from 
Gettysburg. 




World's History. 281 

XVIII.— GREAT RELIGIOUS MOVE- 
MENTS OF THE CENTURY. 

BY DR. B. J. FERNIE. 

Looking back over the path human- 
ity has traversed through the past 
centuries, we see that the trend has 
ever been upward. The new course 
the world has taken at every turning- 
point has been into clearer light and 
into better conditions. The race has 
not been traveling in a circle, and it 
has not been obliged to retrace its 
steps. Every point gained has been 
the stepping-stone to a new advance. 
Material and moral progress can be 
traced from age to age, and the end is 
not yet. There are heights yet to be 
scaled and evils yet to be extirpated. 
Religion and philanthropy, hand in 
hand, are preparing for a new advance 
great as those that lie behind us. 
What has been accomplished in recent 
times encourages us to hope for even 
greater triumphs. The energy of ex- 
ploration, the activity of science, and 
the progress of invention have had 
their parallels in new applications of 
spiritual truth and new organizations 
for effecting spiritual regeneration. A 
brief survey of the past century will 



282 Turning Points in the 

show not only the progress made, but 
the character of the forces that are 
gathered for a new advance. 

DEFENCE ON NEW LINES. 

In a period so intensely active and 
progressive as the nineteenth century 
has been, in politics, science and liter- 
ature, it would have been surprising 
if the Church had remained inert, 
wrapped like a mummy in the cere- 
ments of the past. At the beginning 
of the century, there were voices on 
all hands loudly proclaiming that it 
was dead ; that it was antiquated and 
obsolete ; that it had lost touch with 
the life of the time, that it was a relic 
of exploded superstition ; and as a 
great writer said, had fallen into a god- 
less mechanical condition, standing as 
the lifeless form of a church, a mere 
case of theories, like the carcass of a 
once swift camel, left withering in the 
thirst of the universal desert. That in 
certain circles there was ground for 
such reproach is sufficiently proved. 
Materialism had crept into its colleges, 
sapping away their spiritual life and 
driving young men either into Atheism 
or into the Roman Catholic Commun- 
ion. Such activity as it had, was in 
the evangelical circles only. 



World's History. 283 

The common people still listened eagerly to 
Wesley's successors and were intensely in 
earnest in the Christian life and work r It 
was at the top that the tree was dying, 
where the currents of the philosophy of 
Voltaire struck the branches, and where 
Hume's scorching radicalism blighted its 
leaves. In the universities, and the clubs, 
not in the workshops, was religion scorned 
and contemned. 

There was soon, however, to be a quick- 
ening of the dry bones. The spirit of the 
time — the zeit-geist — began to move in the 
Church. It was the spirit of investigation, 
of scientific inquiry, of rigorous test. The 
older preachers and religious authorities 
still droned about the duty of defending the 
faith "once for all" delivered to the saints. 
In spite of their protests, the younger men 
would go down into the crypt of the 
Church, and examine the foundations of 
the building. They could not be kept back 
by authoritative assurances that the stones 
were sound, and were well and truly laid. 
The hysterical protests against the irrever- 
ence of examination fell on deaf ears. The 
answer was the simple insistance on in- 
vestigation. The very reluctance to permit 
it was an indication that it would not bear 
investigation. 

At the opening of the century, this idea, 
expressed in varying forms, was rapidly 



284 Turning Points in the 

becoming prevalent. The citadel of the 
Church was assaulted, by some with fero- 
city, and by others with scorn and con- 
tempt. The defence was on the old lines 
of denunciation of the wickedness of the 
assailants, of vituperative epithets, and of 
the assumption of special and divine illumi- 
nation. The issue of the conflict would not 
have been doubtful, had it been continued 
with these tactics. The Church would have 
been relegated to the limbo of superstition 
and the hide-bound pedantry of ecclesias- 
ticism, if new defenders on new principles 
had not entered the lists. Reinforcement 
came from a band of philosophic thinkers 
of whom Wordsworth and Coleridge were 
the pioneers. The influence of both these 
men was underestimated at the time. They 
appeared weak and ineffective, but the 
ideas to which they gave expression, en- 
tered the minds of stronger men, who ap- 
plied them with more vigorous force. The 
Church, Coleridge declared, as Carlyle in- 
terprets him, was not dead, but tragically 
asleep only. It might be aroused and 
might again become useful, if only the 
right paths were opened. Coleridge could 
not open the paths, he could but vaguely 
show the depth and volume of the forces 
pent up in the Church ; but he insisted that 
they were there, that eternal truth was in 
Christianity, and that out of it must come 



World's History. 285 

the light and life of the world. As his 
little band of hearers listened to him, they 
saw the first faint gleams of the light which 
was to illumine the world and make the 
darkness and degradation of the material- 
istic philosophy an impossibility to the 
devout mind. Thus he stood at the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth century, as Erasmus 
stood at the beginning of the sixteenth, 
perceiving and proclaiming the existence 
of truths which others were to apply to the 
needs of the time. 

To ascertain precisely in what form the 
forces of Christianity existed and how they 
might be applied to nineteenth century life, 
became early in the nineteenth century the 
problem on which the best thought of the 
time was concentrated. Coleridge's un- 
shaken conviction that it was solvable, 
inspired many with courage. Whately, 
Arnold, Schleiermacher, Bunsen, Ewald, 
Newman, Hare, Milman, Thirlwall and 
many others, approached it from different 
directions. The spirit of scientific investi- 
gation that was in the air was applied with 
reverent hands, but with unsparing resolve 
to ascertain the exact truth. The investiga- 
tion was no longer confined to dogma; a 
proof text from the Bible was no longer suffi- 
cient to close a controversy. The Bible 
itself must be subjected to investigation. 
This was indeed going to the foundations. 



286 Turning Points in the 

There was a wild outcry against rationalism 
and iconoclasm, but the search for truth 
and fact went on. As in a siege, the gar- 
rison must sometimes destroy with their 
own hands outworks which cannot be suc- 
cessfully defended, and may be made a 
vantage ground for the enemy, so the de- 
fenders of Christianity set themselves to the 
task of finding out how much of the current 
theology was credible and tenable, and how 
much might wisely be abandoned, to insure 
the safety of the remainder. The discov- 
eries of Geology, Astronomy and of Biology 
could not be denied, yet their testimony 
was contrary to Christian doctrine. "The 
world was made in six natural days," said 
the old Christian preacher. "The world 
was thousands of years in the making," 
said the geologist. The preacher appealed 
to his Bible, the geologist appealed to the 
rocks. The issue was fairly joined, and in 
the early years of the century it seemed 
as if there was no alternative but that of 
believing the Bible and denying science, or 
believing science and giving up the Bible; 
it seemed impossible to believe both. 
When the scientific theologian ventured to 
suggest that the word "day," might mean 
age, or period, there was another outcry 
that the Bible was being surrendered to the 
enemy. But it was realized that the mes- 
sage of the Bible to the world was not 



World's History. 287 

scientific, and that its usefulness was not 
impaired by the suggested mode of under- 
standing its record of creation ; and gradu- 
ally the surrender was accepted. It is true 
that to this day there are some who will not 
accept it, as there is at least one preacher 
who insists, on the authority of the Bible, 
that "the sun do move," but the number 
diminishes in every generation. A begin- 
ning was made in attaining the true view 
of the Bible which led further and has not 
yet reached its limits. Having admitted 
that the Bible was not given to teach 
science the Church has to decide whether it 
can admit the theory of evolution and 
whether its records of history are authori- 
tative. These questions are so fundamental 
that the strife of Calvinism and Arminian- 
ism and the question of the double proces- 
sion of the Holy Spirit, which seemed vital 
to our fathers have faded into relative in- 
significance. 

Evangelical Activity. 

While these storms were agitating the 
upper air, and the thunderous echoes re- 
verberated through the mountains, the work 
on the plain went rapidly forward. How- 
ever the scholars and the theologians might 
decide the questions at issue between them, 
the working forces were profoundly con- 
vinced that the Gospel was the great need 



288 Turning Points in the 

of the world, and they put out new energy 
and applied all the powers of the mind to 
devising new methods for its propagation. 
The increased facilities of travel, the im- 
proved means of communication and, 
above all, the power of the printing-press, 
were all seized and harnessed to service in 
the dissemination of the Gospel. No char- 
acteristic of this century is so prominent as 
this intense activity and aggressive energy. 
From every secular movement, the Church 
has taken suggestions for its own advance- 
ment. Trade-unionism has suggested 
Christian Endeavor and the Evangelical 
Alliance ; the public school system has de- 
veloped the International Lesson system in 
the Sunday School ; the political convention 
has taught the advantages of great relig- 
ious conferences; the principles of military 
organization have been utilized in the Salva- 
tion Army. If in some circles religion 
seems to have been a fight over doctrines 
and theories, in others it has seemed a 
ceaseless, untiring struggle for converts. 
In no centum since the first century of the 
Christian era has the zeal of propagation, 
with no element of proselytism in it, taken 
so strong a hold of the followers of Christ. 
To translate the Bible into every tongue, 
to carry the Gospel message to every people, 
and to evangelize the masses at home, pro- 
digious efforts have been put forth, and 



World's History. 289 

enormous sums of money have been ex- 
pended. Mental activity, uncompromising 
veracity, indefatigable energy, have char- 
acterized the Church through the century, 
and its closing years show no abatement in 
any of these characteristics. A brief sketch 
of some of the more prominent of these 
developments can render the fact only more 
obvious. 

Bible Revision. 

One of the most important events of the 
century to the English speaking world is 
the Revision of the Bible. Its full effect 
is not yet felt, as the book which was the 
product of the Revisers' labors is but 
slowly winning its way into use in the 
Church and the home. Like its predecessor, 
the Authorized Version now in general use, 
it has to encounter the prejudice which 
comes from long familiarity with the book 
in use and from the veneration for the 
phraseology in which the precious truths 
are expressed. Yet from the beginning 
of the century the need of an improved 
translation was felt and several persons 
undertook to supply it, but with very objec- 
tionable results. The principal bases of 
the need were serious. One was that many 
words and phrases have in the nineteenth 
century a meaning entirely different from 
the one they had in the early part of the 



290 Turning Points in the 

seventeenth century when the Authorized 
Version was issued. One case in point is 
Mark vi. 25, in which Salome asks that the 
head of John the Baptist be given her "by 
and by in a charger." In 161 1 the ex- 
pression by and by meant immediately or 
forthwith, and was a correct translation, 
while with us it means a somewhat inde- 
finite future and is therefore an incorrect 
translation. With the noun, too, the mean- 
ing has changed. Our idea of a charger is 
of a war-horse, not of a dish, which the 
original conveys. A second reason for the 
revision was that there were in the libraries 
in this century several manuscripts of the 
original, much older than those to which 
the translators of the Authorized Version 
had access when they undertook their 
work. A third reason was that a notable 
advance had been made in scholarship in 
the interval, and learned men were much 
better acquainted with the Hebrew and 
Greek idiom than were any of the scholars 
of the King James period. For these three, 
among other reasons, a revision was neces- 
sary, that the unlearned reader might have, 
as nearly as was possible, the exact equiva- 
lent in English of the words of the Bible 
writers. The project, after being widely 
discussed for several years, finally took 
shape in England in 1870, when the Con- 
vocation of Canterbury appointed two 



World's History. 291 

committees to undertake the work. The 
ablest scholars in Hebrew and Greek litera- 
ture in the country were assigned to the 
committees, of which one was engaged on 
the Old, and the other on the New Testament. 
They were empowered to call to their aid 
similar committees in America, who might 
work simultaneously with them. Stringent 
instructions were given to them to avoid 
making changes where they were not clearly 
needed for the accuracy of translation, and 
to preserve the idiom of the Authorized 
Version. Only with these safeguards and 
with not a little reluctance, the commission 
was issued. One hundred and one scholars 
on both sides of the Atlantic took part in 
the work. The committees commenced 
their labors early in 187 1. On May 17, 
188 1, the Revised New Testament was 
issued, and on May 21, 1885, the Revised 
Old Testament was in the hands of the 
public. All that scholarship, strenuous 
labor and exhaustive research could do to 
give a faithful translation had been done 
within the somewhat narrow and conserva- 
tive limits under which the revisers were 
commissioned. 

Bibles by the Miujon. 

With this improvement, there was at the 
same time a marked impetus in Bible cir- 
culation. The nineteenth century has been 



292 Turning Points in the 

eminently a Bible-reading and a Bible- 
studying period. In no previous century 
have efforts on so gigantic a scale been 
made to put the Book in the hands of every 
one who could read it. The price was 
brought so low by the decrease in the cost 
of production, that the very poorest could 
possess a copy. The British and Foreign 
Bible Society, founded in 1804, and the 
American Bible Society, founded in 18 16, 
have largely contributed to this result. 
Both societies were organized to issue the 
Bible without note or comment, and both 
have faithfully labored to promote its cir- 
culation. In spite of all that has been said 
against the Book and in spite of the fact 
that so large a number of persons must have 
been supplied, the circulation has increased 
from year to year. In the year ending 
March, 1896, the American Society alone 
issued 1,750,000 copies, and the British 
two and a half million. During its exist- 
ence the American Society has sent out 
over sixty-one million copies and the British 
Society over one hundred and forty mil- 
lions. The work of translation has kept 
pace with the demand. At the beginning 
of the century the Bible had been trans- 
lated, in whole or in part, into thirty-eight 
languages. It is now translated into three 
hundred and eighty-one, and translators are 
engaged on nearly a hundred others. Nor 



World's History. 293 

must it be supposed that the supply was in 
excess of the demand. There is abundant 
evidence of the desire of the public to 
possess the Word of God. One fact alone 
is a conspicuous proof of this demand. In 
1892 the proprietor of the Christian Herald 
of New York offered an Oxford Teacher's 
Bible as a premium with his journal. The 
offer was accepted with such avidity that 
edition after edition was exhausted, and it 
has been renewed every year since with in- 
creased demand. Through this journal 
alone, by this means, over three hundred 
and two thousand copies have been put into 
the hands of the people during the past five 
years. 

With the increase in the circulation of 
the Word of God there has been a costly 
and thorough effort to gain new light on its 
pages. Never before have labor and money 
been expended so lavishly in endeavors to 
learn from exploration and research, his- 
torical facts which would contribute to an 
intelligent understanding of its history and 
literature. In 1865 a society called the 
Palestine Exploration Society was organ- 
ized for the special purpose of thoroughly 
examining the Holy Land, investigating 
and identifying ancient sites and making 
exact maps of the country. In twenty- 
seven years the society, though working 
with the utmost economy, expended 



294 Turning Points in the 

$425,000. The result of its labors has been 
to let a flood of light on the ancient places 
and the ancient customs of its people, 
explaining many allusions in the sacred 
history, poetry and prophecy that were 
previously dark. The Egypt Exploration 
Fund has also added materially to our 
knowledge of that country which is asso- 
ciated with the early history of the Chosen 
People. But the most valuable aid to Bible 
study came from the discovery of the 
Assyrian Royal Library, a series of clay 
tablets and cylinders covered with cunei- 
form inscriptions which were deciphered by 
Mr. George Smith of the British Museum. 
From these and from the records on the 
monuments of Egypt historical information 
has been derived of inestimable value in 
the study of the Bible. 

A Great Missionary Era. 

One of the most prominent characteristics 
of the Church of Christ in this century has 
been its phenomenal missionary activity. 
Its zeal in this cause, the devotion and 
courage of its missionaries and the amount 
of money expended have had no parallel in 
the previous history of the Church. Al- 
ready a beginning had been made when the 
century dawned. In 1701 King William 
III. of England had granted a charter to 
the Society for the Propagation of the 



World's History. 295 

Gospel in Foreign Parts. In 17 14 Fred- 
erick IV. of Denmark established a College 
of Missions and two Danish missionaries 
were laboring in India. In 1721 the famous 
Danish missionary, Hans Egede, began a 
work in Greenland. In 1732 the Moravian 
missionaries, Dober and Nitschmann, went 
to St. Thomas, and in the following year 
the Moravian Church sent missionaries to 
Labrador, the West Indies, South America, 
South Africa and India. But it was not 
until the last decade of the eighteenth cen- 
tury that the spirit which was to distinguish 
the next century really manifested itself. 
In 1792 the devotion and consecration of 
William Carey led to the formation of the 
Baptist Missionary Society, and in the fol- 
lowing year he sailed for India as its first 
missionary. 

In 1795 the London Missionary Society 
was organized, a missionary ship was pur- 
chased and the first band of missionaries 
sailed for the South Sea Islands. Two 
years later, another party sailed for South 
Africa, among whom were the veterans, 
Vanderkemp and Kitchener. Two Scottish 
societies were founded in 1796 and a Dutch 
Society in 1797. In the closing year of the 
century the famous Church Missionary So- 
ciety was formed in the Church of England. 
Thus the nineteenth century opened with 
organizations for work in existence and 



296 Turning Points in the 

pioneers, few in number but intensely in 
earnest in several fields of labor. 

The first quarter of the century witnessed 
the advent of new agencies, as well as a 
multiplication of forces. The American 
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- 
sions was organized in 18 10, the English 
Wesleyan Missionary Society in 18 14, the 
American Baptist in 18 14, the American 
Methodist in 18 19, the American Protestant 
Episcopal in 1820, and the Berlin and Paris 
Missionary Societies in 1824. Thus, in the 
comparatively short space of thirty-two 
years, thirteen societies had been organized 
by the various denominations here and in 
Europe, each of which was destined to 
grow to proportions little contemplated by 
their founders. Since that time the great 
China Inland Mission and other undenomi- 
national societies have been founded and 
are sending out men and women in large 
numbers to the heathen world. Besides 
these, there have been societies of special 
workers which have done valuable service 
in aiding the missionary societies, such as 
the medical missionaries, the Zenana Mis- 
sionaries and the university and students' 
volunteer movements. Statistics recently 
compiled show that the number of central 
stations in heathen lands occupied by Pro- 
testant missionaries in 1896 was 5055, with 
out-stations to the number of 1 7, 8 1 3. There 



World's History. 297 

are now thirty-seven missionary societies in 
this country alone which have sent out 3512 
missionaries. A library of volumes would be 
needed to give even a sketch of the results of 
the labors of these devoted men and women. 
The Church holds their names in holy 
reverence. Many of them have attained 
the crown of martyrdom, and a still greater 
number have fallen victims to the severities 
of uncongenial climates. Every heathen 
land has now associated with it the name 
of valiant soldiers of the Cross, who have 
given their lives to add it to their Master's 
kingdom. In India among many others 
there have been Carey, Duff, Marty n, 
Marshman and Ward. In China, Morrison, 
Milne, Taylor, John Talmage and Griffith 
John. In Africa, Moffat, Livingstone, 
Hannington and Vanderkemp. In the 
South Seas, Williams, Logan and Paton, 
while Judson of Burmah and a host of noble 
men and women in every clime, have toiled 
and suffered, not counting their lives dear 
unto them, that they might preach to the 
heathen the unsearchable riches of Christ. 

Preaching to Heathen at Home. 

The zeal for the propagation of the Gospel 
among the heathen, has been paralleled by 
the efforts put forth for the evangelization 
of the people in nominally Christian lands. 
In this enterprise the front rank on both 



298 Turning Points in the 

sides of the Atlantic has been occupied by 
the Methodist Church. Its system of itin- 
erary, relieving its ministers in part from 
exhausting study, and so giving them time 
and opportunity for pastoral work and ag- 
gressive evangelistic effort, its welcome of 
lay assistance in pulpit service and its S3'S- 
tem of drill and inspection in the class- 
meeting, have all combined to develop its 
working resources and increase its aggres- 
sive power. The fact that there are now 
in the world over thirty million Methodists 
of various kinds, makes it difficult to realize 
that when the century began, John Wesley 
had been dead only nine years. This cen- 
tury consequently has witnessed the growth 
and development of that mighty organiza- 
tion from the seed sown by that one con- 
secrated man and his helpers. It is doubtful 
whether in politics or society there is any 
fact of the century so remarkable as this. 
The Church Wesley founded has split into 
sections in this land and in England, but 
the divisions are one at heart, and the 
name of Methodist is the common precious 
possession of them all. A great writer has 
contended with much force that the world 
at this day knows no such unifier of nation- 
alities and societies as the Methodist 
Church. When the young man leaves the 
parental roof of a Methodist family for 
some distant city, or some foreign land, the 



World's History. 299 

pangs cf anxiety are alleviated by the 
knowledge that wherever he may be, there 
will be some Methodist Church where he 
will find friends, and some Methodist class- 
leader who will look after his most impor- 
tant interests. The magnificent Methodist 
organization, unequalled outside the Roman 
Catholic Church, has developed within the 
century, and its aggressive forces have been 
felt throughout Christendom. All the de- 
nominations have received an impetus from 
its abundant energy and each in its measure 
has caught the contagion of its activities. 
In country districts, in the great cities and 
in foreign lands, its representatives, loyal 
to their Church and the principles of its 
founder, are pressing forward in self-denial 
and apostolic fervor foremost everywhere in 
the van of the Christian army. 

Kindred with the Methodist in its en- 
thusiasm and still more highly organized, 
is the youngest of all the religious organ- 
izations — the Salvation Army. In its 
origin, a daughter of the Methodist Church, 
with a strong resemblance in spirit and 
purpose and methods to its mother, the Sal- 
vation Army has a mission peculiarly its 
own. It too has grown with a rapidity un- 
exampled in the religious history of other 
centuries. More than one quarter of the 
century had passed when William Booth 
first saw the light, more than half the 



Turning Poi?its in the 



century had passed before he had begun to 
give his life to his Master's service. From 
1857 to 1859 ne was simply a Methodist 
minister, at an unimportant town, appointed 
by his conference, poorly paid, and certain 
to be removed to another sphere at the end of 
his term. In 1865, he and his devoted wife 
resigned home and income and dependence 
on conference for support, and went to 
London. They settled in the poorest and 
most degraded district of the city, and 
began to preach in tents, in cellars, in de- 
serted saloons, under railroad arches, in 
factories and in any place which could be 
had for nothing, or at a low rental. The 
people gathered in multitudes wherever Mr. 
Booth and his wife preached, veritable 
heathen, many of them, who knew nothing 
of the Bible and had never attended a reli- 
gious service in their lives. Converts were 
numerous and they were required to testify 
to the change in their souls and their lives 
and to become missionaries in their turn. 
In 1870 an old market was purchased in 
the densest centre of poverty in London 
and was made the headquarters of the Mis- 
sion. Bands of men and women were sent 
out to hold meetings, sing hymns and "give 
their testimony' ' in the open-air, in saloons, 
or any resort where an audience could be 
gathered. These bands were busy every 
night in a hundred wretched districts of 



World's History. 301 

the great city, and at every stand, some 
poor forlorn creatures would be gathered in 
and encouraged to begin a new life of faith 
in Christ. Some method of organization be- 
came necessary, and was eventually devised. 
The perfect obedience and confidence mani- 
fested everywhere to the man who directed 
the movement, and the entire dependence of 
every worker on him for guidance and sup- 
port, may ha; r e suggested the military 
system. However that may be, the mili- 
tary organization was adopted, and a perfect- 
system framed with the aid of Railton, 
Smith, and a few other clever organizers 
who were attracted to Mr. Booth's side by 
the novelty of his methods, and his marvel- 
ous success. In the spring of 1878, the 
plans were all matured and the new move- 
ment became a compact and powerful reli- 
gious force. Since that time it has spread 
throughout England, into several European 
lands, to the United States, and Canada, to 
India, Australia and South Africa. Its 
autocratic character has been steadfastly 
maintained. General Booth has retained 
absolute control of every officer in his 
service and has the management of the 
enormous income of the army. Occasion- 
ally there has been mutiny which has 
been overcome by tact or prompt discipline, 
and not until this year (1896), when Gen- 
eral Booth's son, Ballington, who was his 



302 Turning Points in the 

representative in the United States, resigned 
rather than be removed from his command, 
has there been any formidable defiance of 
the supreme and despotic government of 
the world-wide organization. The methods 
of the Army are unconventional and are 
shocking to staid, respectable members of 
churches, but criticism is out of place in 
any method which will redeem the masses 
in the numbers won by the Salvation Army. 

Churches Drawing Together. 

A notable characteristic of the religious 
life of the century, especially in the latter 
half of it, has been a desire manifested in 
various quarters, and in different ways, for 
union among the denominations. That 
organic union could be attained, no prac- 
tical man could hope. Uniformity could 
not be expected, even if it could be proved 
to be desirable, but friendly association was 
possible, and there were many who con- 
tended that there ought to be a recognition 
of brotherhood and comradeship, which 
might issue in some attempt at co-opera- 
tion. This was the conviction of many 
prominent preachers and laymen on both 
sides of the Atlantic, early in the century. 
And truly the condition of the world and of 
society was of a character to force such a 
conviction on the minds of intelligent men. 
Infidelity was rampant, and intemperance, 



World's History. 303 

gambling, unchastity, and other forms of 
vice were practiced with unblushing effron- 
tery. On the other side, the churches, 
which should have been waging war on all 
ungodliness, were fighting each other, con- 
tending about the questions on which they 
differed, and exhausting their strength in 
internecine conflict. Was it not time, men 
were asking, that the forces that were on 
the side of godliness united in opposition to 
evil? After long discussion, and some 
opposition, this feeling took practical shape 
in the Evangelical Alliance. At a meeting 
held in London in 1846 eight hundred rep- 
resentatives of fifty denominations were 
assembled. It was found that however 
widely they differed on questions of doc- 
trine and church government, there was 
practical agreement on a large number of 
vital subjects, such as the need of religious 
education, the observance of the Lord's 
Day, and the evil influence of infidelity. 
An organization was effected, on the prin- 
ciples of federation, to secure united action 
on subjects on which all were agreed, and 
this organization has been maintained to 
the present time. Branches have been 
formed in twenty-seven different lands, 
each dealing with matters peculiarly affect- 
ing the community in which it operates, 
and by correspondence, and periodical in- 
ternational conferences, keeping in touch 



304 Turning Points in t/ie 

with each other. Its usefulness has been 
proved in the success of its efforts to secure 
tolerance in several lands, where men were 
being persecuted for conscience' sake, though 
much still remains to be done on this line. 
Perhaps the most conspicuous result of its 
work is the general observance throughout 
Christendom of the first complete week of 
every year as a week of prayer. The pro- 
posal for such an observance was made in 
1858. Since that time the Alliance has 
issued every year a list of subjects which 
are common objects of desire to all Evan- 
gelical Christians. On each day of the 
week, prayer is now offered in every land 
for the special blessing which is suggested 
as the topic for the da}^ 

From the same spirit of Christian brother- 
hood which took shape in the Evangelical 
Alliance, came at later dates other move- 
ments which are yet in their infancy. One 
of these is the Reunion Conference which 
meets annually at Grindelwald in Switzer- 
land. Its object is to find a basis for 
organic union of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church with Congregationalists, Presby- 
terians, Methodists and other evangelical 
denominations. The meetings have been 
hitherto remarkably harmonious, and sug- 
gestions of mutual concessions have been 
made which have been favorably considered. 
A less ambitious, and therefore more hopeful 



World's History. 305 

movement of like spirit, is that of the 
Municipal or Civic Church. Its aim is the 
organization of a federative council of the 
churches of a city, or of sections of a city, 
for united effort in social reform, benevo- 
lent enterprise and Christian government. 
It proposes to substitute local co-operation 
for the existing union on denominational 
lines, or to add the one to the other. It 
would unite the Methodist, Baptist, Con- 
gregational and other churches in a city, 
or district, in a movement to restrict the 
increase of saloons, to insist on the enforce- 
ment of laws against immorality and to 
promote the moral and spiritual welfare of 
the community. The united voice of the 
Christians of a city uttered by a council, in 
which all are represented, would unques- 
tionably exercise an influence more potent 
than is now exerted by separate action. To 
these movements must be added another 
which has been launched under the name 
of the Brotherhood of Christian Unity. 
This is a fraternity of members of churches 
and members of no church, who yet accept 
Christ as their leader and obey the two 
cardinal precepts of Christianity — love to 
God and love to man. Its object is to pro- 
mote brotherly feeling among Christians 
and a sense of comradeship among men of 
different creeds. All these movements are 
an indication of the spirit of the time. As 



o6 Turning Points i?i the 



one of the leaders bas said, their aim is 
not so much to remove the fences which 
divide the denominations, as to lower them 
sufficiently to enable those who are within 
them to shake hands over them. In no pre- 
vious century since the disintegrating ten- 
dency began to manifest itself, has this 
spirit of brotherly recognition of essential 
unity been so general, or has taken a shape 
so hopeful of practical beneficence. 

Organized Activities. 

Effective influence to the same end has 
been set in motion, incidentally, by an 
organization which was originated for a 
different purpose. This is the Christian 
Endeavor Society, which is one of the latest 
of the important religious movements of 
the century. It was primarily designed to 
promote spiritual development among young 
people. It had its birth in 1881 in a Con- 
gregational Church at Portland, Me. Dr. 
Francis E. Clark, the pastor of the church, 
had a number of young people around him 
who had recently made public profession of 
faith in Christ and pledged themselves to 
His service. Precisely what that implied, 
may not have been definitely understood by 
any of them. As every pastor is aware, 
the period immediately following such a 
profession is a critical time in the life of 
every young convert. In the college or the 



World's History. 307 

office, or the store, the youth comes in con- 
tact with people who have made no profes- 
sion of the kind, and he is apt to ask 
himself, and to be asked, in what way he 
differs from them. The early enthusiasm 
of his new relation to the Church is liable 
to decline, and he may become doubtful 
whether any radical change has taken place 
in him. He does not realize that he is at 
the beginning of a period of growth, a 
gradual process, which is to be lifelong. 
Taking his conception of personal religion 
from the sermons he has heard and the ap- 
peals that have been made to him, he has a 
tendency to regard conversion as an experi- 
ence complete and final, an occult mysterious 
transformation, effected in a moment and 
concluded. Disappointment is inevitable, 
and when non-Christian influences are 
strong, there is a probability of his drifting 
into indifference. Dr. Clark was aware of 
this fact, as other pastors were, by sad ex- 
perience, and he sought means to remedy 
it. Some plan was needed which would 
help the young convert and teach him how 
to apply his religion to his daily life, to 
make it an active influence, instead of a 
past experience. The plan Dr. Clark 
adopted was of an association of young 
people in his Church, who should meet 
weekly for prayer and mutual encourage- 
ment and helpfulness, with so much of an 



308 Turning Points in the 

aggressive quality as to exert an influence 
over young people outside its membership. 
The plan succeeded. The religious force in 
the soul, so liable to become latent, became 
active, and the young converts made rapid 
progress. Dr. Clark explained his experi- 
ment to other pastors, who tried it with 
like results. The remedy for a widespread 
defect was found. It was adopted on all 
hands and by ail evangelical denominations. 
It spread from church to church, from 
town to town and into foreign lands. An- 
nual conventions of these Christian En- 
deavor Societies w r ere held, at which forty 
or fifty thousand young people, representing 
societies in all sections of the country with 
an aggregate membership of about two 
million souls, were present to recount their 
experience and pledge themselves anew to 
the service. The basis of their association 
was made so broad that Christians of every 
denomination could heartily unite in its 
profession of faith. Thus, in addition to 
the primary design, a basis of Christian 
inter-denominational union was incidentally 
discovered, and the Methodist and the Pres- 
byterian, the Congregationalist and Episco- 
palian found themselves united in a common 
bond for a common purpose. The move- 
ment in these present years shows no signs 
of decrease, but is still growing in numbers, 
power and influence, and promises to be 



World's History. 3^9 

one of the most potent factors of religious 
life which springing up in this century will 
go on to influence the next. 

The idea of association and combination 
in religious life, of which Christian En- 
deavor is the most extensive illustration, 
has been embodied during the century in 
other forms. Springing directly from the 
Christian Endeavor Society, are the Ep- 
worth League in the Methodist Church, 
and the Baptist Young People's Union in 
the Baptist communion. The two organ- 
izations are practically identical in prin- 
ciple and purpose with the Christian 
Endeavor Society and differ from it only in 
the absence of the inter-denominational char- 
acter. The heads of the Methodist Church 
apprehended danger to their young people 
in their being members of a society not under 
direct Methodist control and feared that 
they might eventually be lost to Methodism. 
The Baptists, on the other hand, were not 
concerned on the question of control, but 
feared that the association of their young 
people with the young people of other 
churches might lead them to think lightly 
of the peculiar rite which separates them 
from other denominations, and to diminish 
its importance in their esteem. Both de- 
nominations therefore organized societies of 
the same kind, to keep their young people 
within the denominational fold. 



310 Turning Points in the 

Another organization which has attained 
large membership and has become inter- 
national, is that of the King's Daughters. 
As its name indicates, it was primarily 
intended for women, though as it extended, 
it added as an adjunct a membership for 
men as King's Sons. It also was inter- 
denominational in character, and its objects 
were more directly identified with the 
philanthropic side of the religious life than 
were those of the societies previously men- 
tioned. It originated in a meeting of ten 
ladies, held in New York, in 1886, at which 
plans were discussed for aiding the poor, 
the unfortunate and the distressed in mind, 
body or soul. They were all Christian 
ladies who recognized the duty of minister- 
ing in Christ's name to those who were in 
need and so fulfilling His injunction of 
kindly service. The plan finally adopted 
was to organize circles of ten members 
each, who should be pledged to use their 
opportunities, as far as they were able, 
for Christian ministration. Each member 
agreed to wear, as a badge of the Order, a 
small silver Maltese Cross, bearing the 
initials, I. H. N., representing the motto, 
4 'In His Name." Every circle was to be 
left free to apply the principle of service as 
it saw fit, or as special circumstances might 
suggest, and all the circles to be under the 
direction and limited control of a central 



World's History. 311 

council. The plan, subsequently modified 
as experience suggested, was widely- 
adopted. The circles have worked in a 
variety of ways, visiting hospitals and 
prisons, making garments for the poor, 
raising funds for the needy, aiding the 
churches and rendering service in various 
ways in which kindly Christian women are 
so effective. 

Still another form of combination in Chris- 
tian work has distinguished this century. 
In 1844 George Williams, a London dry- 
goods merchant employing a large number 
of young men, made an effort to provide 
them with a species of Christian club. His 
own experience as a young man fresh from 
a country home, suddenly inducted into the 
temptations of. city life, suggested to him 
the kind of help such young men needed. 
A Christian friend in a great city to help a 
new-comer, to find him wholesome amuse- 
ment in the evenings, and to put him on 
his guard against the pitfalls that were set 
for his unwary feet, might, Mr. Williams 
was convinced, save many a young man 
from ruin. To provide them with such 
friends and to furnish a place of meeting 
for reading, converse and amusement, was 
the problem the kindly Christian man at- 
tempted to solve. Out of his effort grew 
the institution we know as the Young 
Men's Christian Association, which has its 



312 Turning Points hi the 

mission in nearly every large town in this 
country and in England. The 3^oung man 
of this century can go into no considerable 
town without finding a commodious hall, 
with well-equipped library and reading- 
room, generally with a gymnasium attached, 
and with a host of young men ready to 
make his acquaintance and surround him 
with Christian influences. In many towns, 
the institution has developed from the 
purely religious enterprise into a many- 
sided effort to give practical educational 
training and to attract young men to it by 
the help it renders them in secular pursuits. 
The institution as it now exists, must be 
counted as one of the most beneficent in its 
far-reaching influence that the century has 
produced. 

Humanitarian Work. 

Kindred in spirit, but differing essenti- 
ally in operation, is the institution, peculi- 
arly a product of nineteenth century 
religion, which we know as the Social or 
College Settlement. Though it does not 
claim a distinctively religious character, its 
principles are so thoroughly identical with 
Christianity, that no survey of the religious 
life of the century would be complete with- 
out a recognition of it. It is the spirit that 
brought the Founder of Christianity to the 
earth, to live a lowly life among men, 



World's History. 3i3 

which inspires the Social Settlement. It 
is generally an unostentatious house in 
some crowded neighborhood, where the 
people are poor and life is hard. In the 
house are a number of college-bred men, or 
women, who come in relays and live there 
for a week or a month or longer. They do 
no missionary work, do not preach, or de- 
nounce, or instruct their neighbors, but 
they live among them a cleanly, helpful, 
friendly life, welcoming them cordially as 
visitors, advising them if advice is sought, 
rendering help in difficulties and being 
neighborly in the best sense of the word. 
There are concerts in the house, exhibitions 
of pictures, children's parties and amuse- 
ments of various kinds to which all the 
neighbors are welcome. Charity is no part 
of the Settlement's programme. It does not 
give, but it extends a brotherly hand, and 
in a spirit of friendship and equality seeks 
to do a brother's part in brightening lowly 
lives. Hundreds of such institutions are 
in operation on both sides the Atlantic. 
To the credit of this century be it said that 
it has seen in these institutions the Parable 
of the Good Samaritan made a living fact 
in intelligent organization. 

Tending directly toward the same object, 
is the religious enterprise now commonly 
known as the Institutional Church. It is 
a distinct gain to the Church if the people 



314 Turning Points in the 

in its vicinity discover that it is anxious to 
help them to a better and happier life in 
this world, as well as guiding them to hap- 
piness in the next. The Divine Founder 
of Christianity never ignored the fact that 
men have bodies which need saving, as 
well as souls, and some of His followers are 
following His example. Their churches 
do not stand closed and silent from Sunday 
to Sunday, but are open every day and 
evening, busy with some form of practical 
helpfulness. Temperance societies, coal 
clubs, sewing meetings, dime savings 
banks, gymnasiums, boys' clubs, and a 
host of helpful associations tending to the 
betterment of life, find their home under 
the roof of the church, and the pastor and 
his helpers are finding out the social and 
economical needs of the people by actual 
contact with them and devising means to 
supply them. The critics say this is not 
the business of the Church, but they are not 
found among the people who derive benefit 
from this form of thoughtful interest in 
their welfare. 

The Sunday School. 

Of all the products of this prolific nine- 
teenth century, the one most extensive and 
most profitable to the Church still remains 
to be mentioned. Though this century did 
not see the birth of the Sunday School, it 



World's History. 315 

has witnessed its wonderful development. 
In June, 1784, Robert Raikes published his 
famous letter outlining his plan for the 
religious instruction of children on the 
Lord's Day, and before the close of the 
year, John Wesley wrote that he found Sun- 
day Schools springing up wherever he went, 
and added with prophetic insight: "Per- 
haps God may have a deeper end therein 
than men are aware of. Who knows but 
some of these schools may become nurseries 
for Christians?" Within five years, a 
quarter of a million children were gathered 
into the Sunday Schools. So much had 
already been done before the beginning of 
the century. But even then men did not 
realize whereunto the movement was des- 
tined to grow. Probably no enterprise has 
really exerted a deeper and stronger influ- 
ence on the religious life of the time. Chil- 
dren have entered the schools, passed 
through their grades, have become teachers 
in their turn, and their descendants have 
followed in their footsteps, until now we 
can scarcely bring ourselves to believe that 
a little more than a hundred years ago the 
Sunday School was unknown. The organ- 
ization of Sunday School Unions, the intro- 
duction of the International Lesson System, 
and the City, State and National Conven- 
tions are all the developments of this 
century. The thought that a million and 



316 Turning Points in the 

a half of Sunday School teachers are now 
engaged in every clime, Sunday by Sun- 
day, in teaching the children and young 
people the truths of Christianity is enough 
to fill the mind of the Christian with thank - 
fulness and hope. 

Pulpit and Press. 

It would be beyond the scope of an article 
of this character to attempt to recall the 
names of the eminent preachers of the cen- 
tmy. It has been singularly rich in men 
of eloquence, depth of thought and high 
culture. A few, however, are distinguished 
among the noble army by the phenomenal 
character of their work. Of these probably 
no name is so widely known as that of Rev. 
T. DeWitt Talmage, D. D. One of the 
most remarkable phenomena of the relig- 
ious world in this century, is the fact that 
even' week one preacher should address an 
audience numbered by millions. The fact 
is unprecedented. Of all classes of readers, 
the number of those who read sermons is 
considered the smallest, yet this century 
has produced a preacher whose sermons 
command a public larger than that of a 
fascinating novelist. For thirty years the 
newspapers have been publishing Dr. Tal- 
mage 's sermons in every city of his own 
land, in every English-speaking land and 
in many foreign lands where they are 



Worlds History. 317 

translated for publication. It is a signifi- 
cant fact, which should gratify every 
Christian, that the man whose words reach 
regularly and surely the largest audience 
in the world should be a preacher of the 
Gospel. 

To no man in any walk of life, whether 
politician, editor or author, has the op- 
portunity of impressing his thoughts on 
his generation that Dr. Talmage enjoys 
been given in such fulness. Next in 
extent of influence, and with a like faculty 
of reaching immense and widely scattered 
masses of people, was the late Charles 
Haddon Spurgeon, a preacher of singularly 
homely power, Calvinistic in theology, 
epigrammatic in style, and with an earnest 
evangelical spirit which had a powerful in- 
fluence on both hearers and readers. His 
sermons, like those of Dr. Talmage, were 
read in every land and were instrumental 
in conversions wherever they went. 
Strongly resembling Mr. Spurgeon in his 
strong evangelicalism, as well as in homely 
eloquence, is Mr. D. L. Moody. During 
this century probably no man has addressed 
so large a number of people. In this 
country and in England such audiences 
have thronged the buildings in which he 
preached as no other orator has ever ad- 
dressed on religious subjects, and the influ- 
ence of his words is demonstrated by the 



318 Turning Points in the World* s History. 

thousands who through his appeals have 
been led to Christ. 

We are nearing the end of the century. 
Looking back over the events in the relig- 
ious world which have marked its history, 
one characteristic is prominent above all 
others. It is the operation of the force to 
which an eminent writer has given the 
name of "spiritual dynamics." The world 
does not need a dogma, or a creed, so much 
as it needs power. It needs power to live 
right, to do right, to love God and man, to 
pity the fallen, to relieve the needy, the 
power of being good, of leading a spiritual 
life. This power it finds in Christ, and the 
whole tendency of the religious life of the 
century is to get back to Him. Conduct 
rather than creed, love rather than theolog}', 
have been the watchwords of the Church. 
The spirit of Christ, His teachings, His 
character, His example, are the centre of 
attraction which holds His Church together 
and endues it with the power which shall 
yet subdue the world. 



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